[owe $25 billion]

Bitcoin multiplied more than 13 times last year, and the entire cryptocurrency market gained well over $500 billion in paper value. As a result, U.S. households likely owe $25 billion in capital gains taxes for their digital currency holdings, reported by FuninUSA.

The IRS views bitcoin as property, and transactions using the cryptocurrency — whether to buy goods online or trade for another coin — are generally subject to capital gains tax. (Noting that if an investor is still holding onto cryptocurrencies bought last year, no taxes are owed)

With just a few days to the U.S. tax filing deadline, still only a tiny fraction of Americans have reported their cryptocurrency holdings, according to Credit Karma, and if the most recent 250,000 filers on the Credit Karma Tax platform, fewer than 100 people reported capital gains on their cryptocurrency investments

The perceived complexities of reporting cryptocurrency gains may push lots of filers to wait until the very last minute. But Jagjit Chawla, general manager of Credit Karma Tax, said the reporting process was not so complex as it may seem at the first glance and that Credit Karma Tax has a number of resources about how to approach bitcoin and taxes. (recommend bitcoin forum in FuninUSA for updated news and data about cryptocurrency)

Elizabeth Crouse, a Seattle-based partner at law firm K&L Gates, guessed that there were probably a lot of underreporting. She also took the view that most of the people in the cryptocurrency world tend to have a pretty high risk tolerance, which means they're likely more willing to risk the chance the IRS comes knocking.

[a sort of bubble]

Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University and co-founder of the Case-Shiller Index, expressed his idea about cryptocurrency.

"I'm interested in bitcoin as a sort of bubble. It doesn't mean that it will disappear, that it'll burst forever. It may be with us for a while," said Shiller.

"To me, it's interesting as another example of faddish human behavior. It's glamorous," he added. The bitcoin craze reminds him of tulip mania in the 17th century, the event which is considered one of the first recorded speculative bubbles where a buying frenzy and lofty expectations replace rational justifications for an item's value.

The price of bitcoin grew so fast. The cryptocurrency hurtled above $1,000 in early 2017 after trading at less than a $1 at the beginning of the decade. It even hit an all-time high north of $20,000 in mid-December. (recommend FuninUSA for updated data about cryptocurrency)

A lot of people have benefited from the cryptocurrency investment. But Shiller would still like to see it as a psychology experiment. “It is more psychological than something that could be explained by the computer science department,” He said.

Bitcoin held above $8,000 on Friday morning after topping that level a day earlier. The two-day rally comes after a weak start to April likely tied to tax-related selling. Prices dipped below $7,000 earlier this month.

Will the bitcoin disappear? What's the true value of bitcoin? What essence in bitcoin are we paying for?

[FuninUSA]

Bitcoin is now the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, followed by ethereum, ripple and bitcoin offshoot "bitcoin cash.”

Over the past few months, cryptocurrency eos has crept higher in the cryptocurrency market cap rankings. It wasn't among the top 10 until late January, made ninth place in mid-March and was sixth-largest earlier this week. (recommend FuninUSA for updated news about cryptocurrency)

Eos is a cryptocurrency for a platform set to go live this summer called eos.ios, which proponents expect could be better than ethereum in many ways and potentially bring on much greater adoption of cryptocurrency-related technology.

CoinMarketCap data showed eos climbed more than 30 percent over the last 24 hours for a market capitalization of nearly $7.1 billion, topping litecoin's $6.8 billion. 

[coins mining hardware accelerators]

Though the performance of cryptocurrency price is not ideal to the market since the first quarter of 2018, the  cryptos, especially bitcoin, still stay at a high price. Miners have been buying a large number of video CARDS or professional mining machines. And a large number of manufacturers have launched new products aimed at faster the mining. Now Intel is going to do the same.

The newest announcement of Intel’s patent in the United States Patent and Trademark Office(USPTO) displayed that, as early as September 2016, Intel has designed a kind of coins mining hardware accelerators, integrated in the CPU processor. The accelerators have been made special optimization for information summary and information scheduling data channel, and can cooperate with ASIC, SoC, CPU, FGPA and other hardware.

Intel does not emphasize how great the mining performance of the accelerator, but focus on energy efficiency, because now the mining of hardware, software, are forced to perform SHA - 256 endlessly, which cost too much electricity and take up a lot of space in hardware.

Intel claims that its mining accelerator is much smaller and has a high energy efficiency, reducing energy consumption by up to 35% compared with general-purpose processors. (recommend FuninUSA for more product reviews)

Now that the patent has been submitted for a year and a half, and it is now announced again, it looks like Intel's mining machine will soon be available.

[ICOs]

ICOs, or initial coin offerings, is a crowdfunding way to raise funds for cryptocurrency ventures.

ICOs, a still-unregulated means of raising money in its "modern form," have been around for less than a year and thus are an attractive way for start-ups to raise capital while bypassing regulations. (the knowledge about ICO and cryptocurrency has been mentioned in previous articles in FuninUSA)

The majority of ICOs are scams, but it's still a booming business. They're incredibly risky early stage investments. Scrutiny from regulators, such as the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission, over ICOs is increasing. Meanwhile, bitcoin and other cryptos are falling fast. Also,  internet companies, such as Google and Twitter, have banned cryptocurrency ads on their platforms.

It’s hard to evaluate the ICOs investment. That's expertise that very few people have since the industry is so new. The regulation is coming. And what an investor can do now, is to determine if an ICO is worth putting their money into. This includes evaluating the integrity of the company, the technical team and what products the company has built in the past. This strategy really helps you determine if the sale will help you finance a company that builds something meaningful, or if they're just raising money for the sake of raising money and going to run away with it. (recommend FuninUSA bitcoin forum for more discussion about comprehensive aspects of cryptocurrency )

[$114.9 billion]

So far this quarter of 2018, $114.9 billion of market capitalization or value has been wiped off of bitcoin. The price decline this quarter is the biggest first quarter decline in bitcoin's history.

The price of the cryptocurrency has fallen from $13,412.44 on January 1 to $7,266.07 on March 30, marking a more than 45 percent decline, according to data from CoinDesk. (see previous performance of cryptocurrency market in FuninUSA news)

The biggest price rise was a 599 percent surge in the price of bitcoin in the first quarter of 2013. Bitcoin saw a huge run up in price in 2017 and hit a record high above $19,000 towards the end of last year. But it has faced tougher regulatory scrutiny in 2018 and some of the air has come out of the market.

Obviously, the enhanced regulation and the bans by Google and Facebook have deeply influenced the cryptocurrency market a lot.

Would it possible for bitcoin price to bounce again?

[Bitcoin futures have entered into a contango market]

Bitcoin futures have entered into a contango market, suggesting further agony for the cryptocurrency. A contango market means an asset's futures contracts are trading at a premium to its spot price. For instance, bitcoin on the Coinbase exchange was trading near $7,898 on Wednesday, while Cboe bitcoin futures contracts expiring in June were trading at $7,980 per coin.

Bitcoin itself has dropped significantly from its highs late last year, wallowing below $8,000 per coin following a meteoric rise in 2017; bitcoin continues declining from its March highs of $11,700, most recently testing support at $7,700. In addition, the most recent blow came from an announcement that Twitter would ban cryptocurrency ads. We have seen similar bans by Google and Facebook, as regulatory scrutiny has been another negative catalyst for bitcoin this year.

Hence, looking ahead, we’ll see larger bitcoin miners attempt to take advantage of this contango market. Based on the current conditions about bitcoin, FuninUSA analyst Mike Dong holds the view that the investors should be cautious when considering to invest bitcoin or bitcoin futures, until seeing some signs of strength injected back into the market. (recommend FuninUSA for more financial news)

What's your opinion on the contango market of bitcoin futures? Would you consider it being beneficial to bitcoin miners?

Japan has become one of the largest markets in the world for cryptocurrencies. Trading in bitcoin-Japanese yen accounted for about 57.6 percent of total bitcoin trading volume, according to CryptoCompare.

Japanese authorities recognized bitcoin as legal tender last April and require cryptocurrency exchanges to register with the government. Sixteen exchanges have done so, March 7, reported by FuninUSA.

Hong Kong-based Binance was operating in Japan through the internet without a license for a virtual currency exchange. Recently, Japan’s Financial Services Agency issued a warning Friday to major cryptocurrency exchange Binance for operating without registration in the country.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao confirmed receipt of the warning, tweeting: "Our lawyers called JFSA immediately, and will find a solution.” Reported in FuninUSA, Zhao has once expressed that the company tried to get a license in Japan but has decided to remove its staff from its office.

Bitcoin traded 3.4 percent lower near $8,417, according to CoinDesk at 10:20 a.m. ET. As you know, this price is nearly half the price when bitcoin hit its highest price last year.

With the stricter regulation of cryptocurrency, what do you think is the trend of bitcoin price? Also, what’s the possibility that bitcoin would become a prevalent method of payment?

[Blockchain efficiency]

Some people say, blockchain technology ensures the safer way of transaction and may, at last, replace the current bank systems. Their opinions are based on the idea that, blockchain assigns transactions or smart contracts to an immutable ledger, verifiable by multiple parties.

However, recently, several Chinese students published a paper calling out some vulnerabilities that may subject blockchain entries to inefficiencies, hacking and other criminal activity. I'm worried that the immature blockchain technology will negatively influence my invest in bitcoin. 

The key known risk factors are listed below:

-Blockchain efficiency: For starters, the efficiency of blockchains themselves may become overloaded with complex consensus mechanisms and invalid data. Most popular consensus mechanism used in blockchain is Proof of Work, which the researchers call a "waste of computing resources.” In addition, blockchains will produce a lot of data -- block information, transaction data, contract bytecode -- that may be outdated and useless. Thus, An efficient data cleanup and detection mechanism is desired to improve the execution efficiency of blockchain systems.

-Private key security: The user's private key is regarded as the identity and security credential when using blockchain. It’s generated and maintained by the user instead of third-party agencies. An attacker could "recover the user's private key because it does not generate enough randomness during the signature process. Since the blockchain is not dependent on any centralized third-party trusted institutions, if the user's private key is stolen, it is difficult to track the criminal's behaviors and recover the modified blockchain information.

- Frequent criminal activities with Bitcoin include ransomware, underground markets and money laundering. Through some third-party trading platforms that support Bitcoin, users can buy or sell any product.Since this process is anonymous, it is hard to track user behaviors, let alone subject to legal sanctions.

-Transaction privacy leakage: Unfortunately, the privacy protection measures in blockchain are not very robust. Criminal smart contracts can facilitate the leakage of confidential information, theft of cryptographic keys, and various real-world crimes (e.g.,murder, arson, terrorism, etc.)

These are all important factors which should be included when considering to join the blockchain and cryptocurrency investment. ( the full 9 risk factors can be seen in FuninUSA)

The technology of blockchain is still very immature at this moment. I wonder, if these problems could finally be solved. Will bitcoin gradually accepted by the majority of people and be used as a method of payment? Also, once the blockchain technology is mature enough, will the bitcoin disappear? Hoping to hear your idea! 

[ps:students are Xiaoqi Li, Peng Jiang and Xiapu Luo (all with Hong Kong Polytechnic University), Ting Chen (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China), and Qiaoyan Wen (Beijing University)]