Since 2014, Microsoft has accepted bitcoin as a payment medium for the purchase of applications, games and other digital content from Windows, Xbox Games, Xbox Music or Xbox Video Stores. However, Microsoft has recently decided to stop accepting payments by bitcoin on the grounds that the currency is too unstable.  (( Its a really bad new, Im a fan of Microsoft and I always use Bitcoin to buy games from it ( According to coindesk, Microsoft has already resumed the Bitcoin payment as an option, so don't worry: https://www.coindesk.com/microsoft-resumes-bitcoin-payments-after-halt-over-instability/At the end of last year, the mempool was full and fees were sky high, but it has been normalized already, fortunately. These kind of problems will be solved by the Lightning network in some time and if everything will work as expected, more and more merchants will accept bitcoin in the future. |
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I agree, it is an iterative process: the same happened for web browsers and generally internet a while ago. The difference is the www had no idea where it was going or needed to get to. A cryptocurrency needs to, at the very least, be able to match that performance of what's already out there. There are self-driving cars (e.g. google autonomous car) on the streets, but I bet you drive your own car at the moment, despite of your car doesn't match the performance of the self-driving car. And I think you are not displeased with your car, just because it's not autonomous... Everything needs time to get developed, to get widespread and to reach the mass adoption. Lightning network is a bit similar to the self-driving car, because both are still under heavy testing just to be 100% sure that the technology will be the best available when they will go live. |
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Just curious, what is this "merits" is all about? I just saw it when reading some post on the forum. And I thought all of us have this. Does anyone what "merit" represent? I have a 100 merits.
You have 100 Merits because of your current rank. You have also spendable Merits, separately. Spendable Merits (sMerits) are for giving them out to others, who create quality posts. At the beginning you have less sMerits (half or less) then your current Merits. If you check the above quoted post from exus https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28908116#msg28908116 which contains infographic of the Merit system, you can see that members of the forum found the post useful and gave some of their spendable Merits to exus. Giving out spendable Merits doesn't decrease your Merits at all.  If you create useful posts people will hopefully start giving you Merits and this can also increase your spendable Merits (each received Merit increases your spendable merits by 0,5 sMerit). |
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It's not so easy these days, because as you have mentioned the bitcoin debit card issuer WaveCrest were forced to stop it's business because of violating VISA's rules. That made XAPO and the others to stop the card business and now we're waiting for them to find another card issuer company. If you had a XAPO card, I presume you were verified at XAPO, so why not just send out EUR from XAPO to your bank account? (If you didn't have XAPO card, then it's not an option, but you can search for it if XAPO allows EUR withdrawal to Europe or not, if yes, you can open an account).
You can also check localbitcoins as well, you can find buyers who will use bank transfer to buy bitcoin, but take extra care because of the scammers
Not easy? How it's difficult? The Bitcoin prepaid cards are not the only solution, and there are better solutions than a card. You are surely not a European citizen otherwise you would not say such thing. @abioganga can easily join Kraken, sell his coins and request a SEPA transfer. If he requests the SEPA before 11.00 am his bank account will be credited the same day before 07.00 pm. Can't really make it faster and easier. I take Kraken as an example but it's the same with the majority having SEPA. I've only started with the debit cards because OP has started with them and was referring to the discontinued card programs. After I've mentioned the EUR withdrawal from XAPO as a possible solution. I was not mentioning SEPA becasue in the EU that's the default type of wire transfer if you're sending EUR inside the EU. Of course it's not only XAPO that can provide SEPA transfers in the EU but most of the biggest exchanges also. I've also read somewhere that Kraken has managed to upgrade it's system in the middle of January this year because before it was everything but reliable... Using a prepaid card is easier if you don't want to wire the amount directly to your bank account because of any reason. (and there are some banks who don't credit the amount to the person's account but they're sending it back if it's from a known bitcoin exchange, so it's better to read and search first if there are issues with the bank or not, usually the country's local board in the forum can help in this kind of questions) Unfortunately, debit card is not an option now, so the solution is the exchange and the bank trasfer. |
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After China, S Korea, India, now it's France and Germany. Won't be long before US jumps in too. Not necessarily a bad thing if it only targets illegal activities& scams. What do you guys think?
As long as they don't want to ban, it's fine for bitcoin. It's good idea to stop scammers and to protect people from being scammed with a brand new thing they don't know about... Hope that they don't want to ban it, because if they make bitcoin illegal, they won't be able to tax the incomes coming from bitcoin related businesses. So as long as they need the taxes bitcoin has hope to be 'just' regulated and not banned. |
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It's not so easy these days, because as you have mentioned the bitcoin debit card issuer WaveCrest were forced to stop it's business because of violating VISA's rules. That made XAPO and the others to stop the card business and now we're waiting for them to find another card issuer company. If you had a XAPO card, I presume you were verified at XAPO, so why not just send out EUR from XAPO to your bank account? (If you didn't have XAPO card, then it's not an option, but you can search for it if XAPO allows EUR withdrawal to Europe or not, if yes, you can open an account).
You can also check localbitcoins as well, you can find buyers who will use bank transfer to buy bitcoin, but take extra care because of the scammers
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'Blockchain' is a buzzword in the IT world nowdays, every company wants to have their own blockchain, because they think it can solve their problems, can cut down costs (on technology, and on labour). Blockchain consulting companies are launching nearly every day and they are growing their profit with the hype, but most of the companies can live without a blockchain today. The new startups and the fintech companies are trying to solve a single problem with a blockchain type of solution, so on the long run, there will be several blockchains in our life and not one big blockchain that will contain all the information needed. There will be separate blockchain for insuretech compaines and a different one for payment systems, and also there will be separate blockchain for the smart contracts to run. Some of the jobs will be heavily affected by the blockchain technology, but not all of the jobs of course.
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Hello everybody! I heard that soon the bitcoin commission will be lower, did anybody hear about it? It's true?
Do you mean the transaction fees? Soon it will be lowered when Lightning Network is already implemented. It's on test and we'll definitely going to have lower fees in the future. https://lightning.network/There are some LN nodes and channels already on the mainnet also. The number of the nodes and the payment channels between nodes are growing day after day, but they're only testing (but with real bitcoins). This needs time to get implemented and to get widespread, so it's not weeks or two weeks. If we don't count on LN yet, there's another possible short term solution to cut down the fees on the transactions. Using the SegWit type of addresses can help blocks to contain more transactions and this can cause the fees to decrease, but people needs to make their homework and switch to SegWit to get lower fees at the end. |
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I don't think it will die. We are talking about global P2P networks. Governments can make as much regulations as they want but they do not have the means to enforce those rules and regulations without investing into a huge "global coin surveillance network" or seriously interfering with basic human rights. The only thing what they can regulate is cashing out for fiat.
That's their only possible tool against bitcoin, together with banks, governments can ban the access to exchanges where people can buy/sell bitcoins. This is a kind of 'last chance' for them in my opinion, first governments will try to tax the profit coming from bitcoin related transactions. If they can't identify the tax payers effectively, then they can force exchanges to verify the users and share their data to the national tax authorities. If everything goes wrong, they can freeze the account of the exchanges to prevent them using fiat. Despite of the above mentioned things, authorities cannot stop cashing out from bitcoin to fiat but they can make it to be a real pain and risky (using localbitcoins only and meet with the seller/buyer in shady environment... etc...) This is the situation where the Lightning network cannot solve the situation (if they ban bitcoin totally, but I don't expect this, as governments can have huge incomes from taxes in connection with bitcoin, so it's not their interest to stop taxing and just ban the whole thing). |
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I had a look at that block. I'm happy to see that people start using segwit type of addresses, but I have noticed strange transactions in the block, like this: https://blockchain.info/tx/51a1fd6be3664dc3dd003f0b77343b19db952a8d35af2819d2dd2619bd43b9d5This has several inputs from Segwit type addresses and goes to one SegWit address. I also have noticed that the number of transactions in this block is lower than in the next (normal, not 2MB sized) block, but I think this is because of these strange transactions. Anyway, if the 2MB blocks will be filled with normal (1 input, 1 output or similar) transactions, it will let to put more transactions into the Segwit block than into a normal block, so on the long run it will cause to shrink the mempool and the fees too. |
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When did you send you last transaction? What services do you use to estimate your fees? People are simply overpaying for their transactions. I have seen quite a few transactions which were confirmed with a fee 60 sat/b so it isn't a lot. Most of the exchanges and web wallets don't allow you to use your custom fee. There is no room for small transactions in Bitcoin these days so that is why we need Lightning Network which aims at making micro-transactions possible. Give it some time, don't overpay.
I usually check the actual fee structure (usually several times a day) on blockchain.info: https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-state-by-fee-levelToday I just realized something weird:  It's OK that the regular fee is around 50 sat/B, it's very friendly rate compared to the end of last year... But what the heck is that pack of the 1sat/B transaction with the size more than 40 MB? Is this a bug in the blockchain.info script or I don't know. I just can't imagine that people are sending their transactions with such a low fee. Even if they're thinking about accelerating the transaction later on, ViaBTC needs at least 10 sat/B for a transaction to include it into their free spots. I'll have an eye on that for now |
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I think this technology is very good for finance industry. All major banks, financial institutions will want to take benefit of blockchain in the future.
And they're in the development already, so they really want the blockchain technology, to reduce their running costs (and to gain more profit as a result)... If the major insurance companies are telling that they're not working on a blockchain system, the reason can be that they're trying to cooperate with fintech companies to adopt an already developed solution (via cooperation or they're just buying the small fintech company with the patents too). The technology will change the financial and the insurance market, the only question is the timing, but according to the fintech workshops and fintech conferences, the process has already started, slowly but surely |
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Unexpectedly: criticism of Bitcoin in SwedenNordea Bank AB took up arms against the Crypto-currency. Bloomberg reports that the largest Nordea bank in Sweden and the whole of Northern Europe sent a memorandum to its employees with a ban on trading Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. Unexplained, but true: Bitcoin in Sweden is not loved by everyone! Nordea Bank AB has imposed a ban on operations with crypto-currencies after the bank's board reached a conclusion about the unregulated nature of the crypto-currency market. However, Nordea stated that the bank's updated policy includes transitional provisions for personnel with existing crypto-currency reserves and "permits certain exceptions". In other words, employees who already own Bitcoin are allowed to keep their savings in a crypto-currency form. More
That's not unexpected if a bank is against crypto, especially bitcoin. Especially, if the bank enables it's customers to buy crypto related derivatives. Now it's interesting the idea behind, why the bank bans the employees to trade cryptos, but allow the customers... You can find useful posts about the topic in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2804977.0;topicseenWe need to wait a bit to clarify the real effect of the ban, but it's not unexpected yet that banks will behave like this, unfortunately... |
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I guess what has thrown me off has been the recommended fee on earn.com. One would think that they would reflect more accurate fee recommendations based on the data from the previous 3 blocks, but now I’m beginning to wonder if their data is actually accurate.
Either way, I’m fairly new to segwit, so I’m grateful for all of you who have responded here. I’m learning more and more about it, and the knowledge shared here has been phenomenal. Keep it coming. Maybe someone can post about the common misconceptions about segwit?
I usually check fees here on blockchain.info: https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-state-by-fee-leveland on fork.lol: https://fork.lol/tx/feeThere's a difference between the two kind of fee calculation, I know, but using the two kind of information, you can make a better guess about the fees you have to use to get the tx into the next block (if you need that speed). I also think that there are less transactions these days, there are less and less posts with "help me my tx is stuck" and there are also less and less threads opening in the Bitcoin discussion board. In december, there were new threads in nearly every minute, now it takes hours (or a bit less) so it seems that bitcoin became less interesting since the price drop, but who knows... |
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What do you think - which large internatonal companies will use bitcoins?
Microsoft was using bitcoin for purchases on their website, but it is not working anymore because of the fees. And no, with the actual fees, do you really think that they are going to use Bitcoin? Maybe they can use their own coin, but they can not ruin their own reputation with a crypto who has fees expensive as the current ones. Bang on! Microsoft stopped temporarily accepting bitcoin as it happened sometimes previously, but it resumed bitcoin payments two weeks ago: https://www.coindesk.com/microsoft-resumes-bitcoin-payments-after-halt-over-instability/You can also see Microsoft page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13942/microsoft-account-add-money-with-bitcoinAnyway, yes, it will take time. Until we have the fees and speed of transactions problems solved it is very unlikely that major companies will start accepting bitcoin. Never say never... These days another pizza day like transaction has happened, it was on the mainnet (bitcoin live chain, not on testnet) where a user has ordered something and payed via the Ligthning network... https://cointelegraph.com/news/lightning-networks-pizza-day-first-ever-physical-purchase-on-lightning-networkSo it's happening at the moment, companies are opening payment channels on the bitcoin Lightning network so we just need to wait a bit and it will spread around. |
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Article (more details ) in English: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/nordea-bans-employees-from-trading-bitcoin-spokeswoman-saysNordea will impose its ban from Feb. 28, after its board agreed to take a stand due to the “unregulated nature” of the market, spokeswoman Afroditi Kellberg said by phone on Monday. The bank had about 31,500 employees at the end of the third quarter.
Nordea said its policy “includes transitional provisions for staff with existing holdings and allows for certain exceptions.” Employees who already own Bitcoin are “permitted to keep existing holdings.”
Nordea said its treatment of Bitcoin with regard to clients isn’t a policy as such, “but it’s important to emphasize that it is not something we recommend our customers to invest in,” the bank said in an email. “Just like every other bank trading platforms, Nordea Investor provides access to trade all securities listed on, for example, Nasdaq.” In practice, this means that Nordea’s “self-services customers can purchase cryptocurrency-related products through the platform, but it is important to emphasize that it is not something we recommend.” I think here is a bit of misunderstanding here. Since they do offer access for clients in trading crypto they have banned the staff and their traders to use the same channels.So the ban might be more of an internal one, the staff could do whatever they want in their private life and outside the bank. .... or at least I hope so... Either way, this is f*** up Interesting, I just trying to find the reason behind the regulation. 1. They're trying to protect their employees from the heavy losses that possibly happens when someone is trading crypto. 2. They're trying to stop crypto trading internally, because if the employees can't trade, they won't recommend it to customers, so they're protecting their customers I just don't get the point, what is the exact activity they're trying to ban, how the stuff at the banks can trade crypto. In my opinion, they're banning the stuff from buying derivatives in connection with crypto. I don't think that the staff is using the crypto exchanges at work on the bank's PCs while they're doing their daily job, so I think they just trying to stop staff to buy that derivatives. Anyway, staff can trade on smartphones as well, if they really want to, so it's a bit pointless to ban trading on crypto exchanges. Another point if banks are contacting exchanges if the employees are registered or not, and if they're verified or not, but I just can't imagine this can happen yet... |
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First of all, banks operate using private ledgers. They will always claim that is due to the privacy of their customers, which has some validity. However, banks rely on issuing loans in order to gain profits and revenue, and they use their customers’ money pool to back those loans, which I believe to be the main reason they keep a private ledger vs. a blockchain public ledger.
If they were to create their own blockchain, I don’t believe it would be their sole method of conducting business. It would probably be used to be able to track customers’ funds, and provide transparency for those who opt in to have their balances available for display publicly at any given time. I don’t believe it will be successful for them to create their own digital currency, as they’ll have less access to create loans publicly using the pooled funds, as the blockchain wouldn’t allow them to use their customers’ funds without their initiation of transactions to back a loan.
Banks are all about profits, and most of them probably realize that there are no profits in crypto currency for their type of business model. Besides, if they did create their own crypto, there won’t be much of an effect on existing values of the major cryptos... it would be no different than a random ICO or shitcoin launch by a random Joe Blow developer.
Banks are interested in the blockchain as a system, because it can reduce the cost of their current IT system. There are several procedures that can be automated with a blockchain based new system. Also, they already have a geologically decentralized system with the necessary infrastucture (in branches, ATMs they have PCs that can act as a node and there's no need for specialized equipment for a blockchain like model because if one node fails, the others also have the ledger, so the risk of the data loss is minimalized with blockchain systems. |
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I have expected this earlier, imagine steam taking Bitcoins cost higher than average game, yet no quick solution. This is sad news to steam, with those higher fees, which merchant will be happy to use Bitcoin as a payment method? None! I particularly will not try it, would rather continue to keep or hold my bitcoin.  Just wait for the lightning network (and read about it). There are serious testing going on on the mainnet too, but you have to wait for it. It will solve the fee and the speed problem, but the project needs time to get fully tested and working. What I'm waiting for is some merchants to test it (maybe in online webshops) because the more testers are joining the project, the sooner we'll have the solution delivered. So the solution is arriving but don't hold your breath.... It's better to implement something later then to implement it sooner with bugs still in the system... |
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I thought BTC was supposed to not be tied currently to the stock marker but I find it weirdly strange that while the stock market is crumbling so is BTC, and many other commodities.
I've been wondering about this lately. The crypto markets took a nosedive at the same time the stock market broke 26,000. Clearly, these markets do not move in unison. Is it possible they react differently? Cryto is a global economy but a lot of the investment is made in the United States. And don't forget the futures, they're already live and people are trading them too. That's really close to stock market... Yesterday one of the futures contracts has been closed and Bitcoin has hit the bottom of the price in long time. This also could be just a coincidence but well... |
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I think they should introduce lightening network soon, where users can transfer btc instantly and with few cent fee only.
It's not that easy to introduce the lightning (not lightening) network, that needs time... Everyone is waiting for the lightning network because they think that will solve every problem in connection with bitcoin. It is about to solve most of the current issues, but will cause new issues, to alts. Altcoins exist because the ecosystem needs them. When the BTC mempool is full, it's easier to transfer funds using the top alts like LTC, ETH, etc... But there's a question if there will be a use case for those alts at all, when BTC will be fast and cheap... |
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