An interview with one of the people from Grayscale (the people with the bitcoin investment trust) about why an SEC product is needed and the impact of the halving next year.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/11/20/why-bitcoin-funds-sec-filing-may-be-a-big-crypto-breakthrough.html

It’s a make-or-break moment for bitcoin ETFs.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has set an Oct. 13 deadline for approving a bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund from Bitwise Investments, a move that could mark a meaningful milestone in bitcoin’s long-term growth story.

...

“We’re closer than we’ve ever been before to getting a bitcoin ETF approved,” Hougan, former CEO of Inside ETFs, said Monday on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”

“Sometime before Monday, the SEC has to give its decision: yes or no. They have no more ways to postpone it at this point,” Hougan said. “We will hear clearly between now and Monday what they think, and then, depending on what we hear, we’ll go forward from there. But it should be a very exciting week.”

.

I'm not holding my breath, so would be pleasantly surprised if approved.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/on-bitcoin-etf-approval-closer-than-weve-ever-been-says-bitwise.html

Bank of America CEO: Anonymous currencies are not good
Jul. 22, 2019 - 6:25 - Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan on technology’s impact on banking, cryptocurrency and the impact of a potential Federal Reserve interest rate cut.

https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6062588247001/#sp=show-clips

While I agree with Moynihan about a number of things, I think he is having to toe the line due to the political pressure being brought to bear around the world.

Anonymity is critical for freedom around the world.  Anonymous speech is important and you can't fund it if you aren't allowed some anonymous currencies.  Cash is a perfect example of an anonymous currency and limiting anonymous currencies limits speech.

Mnuchin says Treasury will ensure bitcoin doesn’t become ‘Swiss-numbered bank accounts’

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday the department will police bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with “very, very strong” regulations so that they don’t become cloaked in secrecy.

“We’re going to make sure that bitcoin doesn’t become the equivalent of Swiss-numbered bank accounts, which were obviously a risk to the financial system,” Mnuchin said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/18/mnuchin-says-us-will-ensure-bitcoin-doesnt-become-like-anonymous.html


Seems like fear.

The US used to encourage innovation, but things like this show that even the Republicans are now embracing the leftward tilt towards less freedom.

I don't believe it, but:

"[John] McAfee has vowed to expose Nakamoto in a matter of weeks, and claimed to the Caller that he already knows his identity."

https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/23/john-mcafees-message-to-the-irs-and-why-he-plans-to-reveal-satoshi-nakamoto/

"Why an Investor Is Predicting Bitcoin Could Hit $700,000"

The annual Sohn Investment Conference in New York is usually a place where Wall Street’s best hedge fund managers and investors present their top stock picks—from Amazon to Valeant Pharmaceuticals. And for the first time in the event’s 23-year history, one of those investors used the Sohn conference stage Monday to recommend a certain digital investment: Bitcoin.

John Pfeffer, a partner at his London-based family office Pfeffer Capital, is not only betting on Bitcoin, but giving it a bold price target of $700,000—about 75 times the current Bitcoin price of nearly $9,500.

...

http://fortune.com/2018/04/25/bitcoin-price-prediction-john-pfeffer/

Not only does venture capitalist Tim Draper think bitcoin is here to stay, he says it could be bigger than the internet.

When asked during a debate how the digital currency compared to his early investments in Tesla, Hotmail and Skype, Draper said bitcoin will be "bigger than all of those combined."

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/23/early-tech-investor-says-bitcoin-will-be-bigger-than-the-internet.html

[Don’t put any money into bitcoin that you can’t afford to lose. But I don’t think we should ban it]

Sheila Bair, former FDIC chief...the last question:

Q: We also didn’t have bitcoin 20 years ago. Some central bankers are concerned about the mania around cryptocurrencies. What is your view?

A: Don’t put any money into bitcoin that you can’t afford to lose. But I don’t think we should ban it—the green bills in your pocket don’t have an intrinsic value, either. The value is based on what others think is its value. That’s true of any currency. Regulation should be focused on good disclosure, education, warding off fraud, and making sure it is not used for illicit activities. Let the market figure out what it’s worth. That is what it is doing now.

Paywall:
https://www.barrons.com/articles/sheila-bair-sees-the-seeds-of-another-financial-crisis-1519916556

The news is that Segwit hit the 95% lock in just now.  Now just waiting until active. (5% more here plus 2016 blocks) [edit for clarity]

Looks like coinbase.com will be supporting Bitcoin Cash...just (probably) not very soon...per their email:

...
Over the last several days, we’ve examined all of the relevant issues and have decided to work on adding support for bitcoin cash for Coinbase customers. We made this decision based on factors such as the security of the network, customer demand, trading volumes, and regulatory considerations.

We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time.
...

(Cover)
The hottest in­vest­ment of the first half of the year wasn’t Ama­zon.­com, Net­flix, or even Tesla. In fact, your broker prob­a­bly isn’t pitch­ing it, and it is barely even rec­og­nized by the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion. Yet cryp­tocur­ren­cies—the most fa­mous of which is Bit­coin—are shoot­ing out the lights.
...
It’s easy to dis­miss the digi­tal cur­rency as an out­landish, even dan­ger­ous, fad. Don’t.
...

(Paywalled):
http://www.barrons.com/articles/beyond-bitcoin-how-blockchain-is-changing-banking-1498890463?mod=BOL_hp_highlight_1

(Barron's is published by Dow Jones who publishes the WSJ)

Four years ago, Alberto's career prospects were bleak. The 23-year-old Venezuelan had just graduated from college with a degree in computer science, but his nation's economy was already shredded by 13 years of socialism.
...
Alberto, meanwhile, based on his own account, is earning more than $1,200 a day mining bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

He's part of Venezuela's rapidly growing digital currency mining community. Faced with growing threats of violent crime and government extortion, its members interface through secret online groups and take extreme precautions to hide their activities.

http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/28/the-secret-dangerous-world-of

One of the key points in the article was that the authoritarian socialists keep electricity virtually free, so mining is only a matter of getting the miners and turning them on.

Now if I still knew people in Venezuela, that would be a good arbitrage.  Send them miners and split the proceeds.

The USA PATRIOT Act required that all banks in the United States verify the identities of their depositors, in order to undermine the ability of terrorists to use our financial system. So it’s ironic that Andreas Antonopoulos called the practice “dangerous” in a YouTube post that went up recently. The concept has come to be known as “know your customer,” or “KYC.” It’s bandied about a lot at fintech and bitcoin gatherings.

...

http://observer.com/2016/05/andreas-antonopoulos-kyc-bitcoin/

One of the great mysteries of modern life is the time it still takes for a check to clear. Every other financial transaction is being reduced to the tap of a phone or the press of a key. But checks take days to rumble their way from payee to the originating bank, days of lost interest and presumably fees for the intermediaries passing them around behind the scenes. Transactions and data management are supposed to be slicker these days, and yet time and again all of us run into situations where it’s as though technology never happened, or stopped around 1993.

Now come blockchains, and according to father and son authors Don and Alex Tapscott, we should all be cheering. Blockchains are basically a much better way of managing information.
...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-is-just-the-beginning-1464302194

Japanese police on Saturday arrested Mark Karpeles, head of the collapsed MtGox Bitcoin exchange, over the disappearance of about $390 (£250 million) worth of the virtual currency, local media said.  ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/currency/11777486/Executive-arrested-over-disappearance-of-390-million-in-Bitcoins.html

It has an introduction to Cryonics, talks about Ralph Merkle (the "Merkle" in Merkle roots etc and also a board member of Alcor).  Plus why it might be useful for cryonic members.  Unfortunately I couldn't copy and paste any selections since they are using Issuu.com which pretty much sucks.

Anyway, this is an older article, but it is finally available online:
http://issuu.com/alcorlife/docs/cryonics2013-10/15?e=2247459/11063039

One day last year, at the height of the Ukrainian revolution, Mark Howard spotted something interesting on television. In the background, a protester was holding up a poster with an instantly recognizable logo: A “B” with two vertical bars, the symbol for the digital currency bitcoin.

Mr. Howard is an American IT specialist and a self-described bitcoin enthusiast. He surmised that the poster’s QR code, which is a kind of square bar code, must contain the address of a bitcoin wallet belonging to the protesters. On a whim, he froze the frame, scanned the code with an app on his phone, and sent $10 worth of bitcoin to a country whose banks were paralyzed but whose protesters needed money to continue their fight.

It happened instantly, and the total cost of the transaction was $0.02.

If using unregulated cryptocurrency to crowd-fund foreign revolutions sounds...

Link:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/here-comes-almost-free-money-1433715790

But it is pay-walled. Search with "Money Isn’t Free, but Moving It Is Now Cheaper" in Google and follow that link.

A little bit more about Hal Finney and Alcor is here,  http://www.alcor.org/blog/hal-finney-becomes-alcors-128th-patient/

Hal Finney, Alcor member A-1436 who chose the whole-body option, was pronounced legally deceased on August 28, 2014 at 8:50 am at the age of 58, in Scottsdale, Arizona. That same day, Hal became Alcor’s 128th patient.

Hal, who has had cryopreservation arrangements with the Alcor Foundation for over 20 years, was Bitcoin’s earliest-ever adopter.
...
 

David Woo, global rates head at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, discusses the volatility of Bitcoin and why he views it as a payment system and not something to invest in. He speaks on “Bloomberg Surveillance.”
------

"Bitcoin can become a major means of payment and may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers.  As a medium of exchange, Bitcoin has clear potential for growth."

------
"Have to separate bitcoin as a payment system vs an investment."
"Think about the number of companies adopting bitcoin."
"...has become less volatile this year."

Also it has a few quotes from Ben Lawsky praising parts of bitcoin.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/bitcoin-is-a-payment-system-not-an-investment-woo-vkLZekoCRc2yZu4Pr~2Ptw.html?cmpid=yhoo

and Danny Hamilton hasn't been on since Oct 12.