BITCOIN NEWS EVRYDAY! From multiple sources.

[MICRO]

Well, we know one person mined a lot of bitcoin, in the beginning... Probably Satoshi

Yes but we don't know if he still owns them . Maybe he sold out ... That would be stupid thou

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[igorr]

Post #57,  Kiev Ukraina

[MICRO]

Igor can i ask u please to unquote that whole thread , that is just bit quote wall. U just put #57 - and ur post , so we know u are addressing to that article but without repeating whole article. Tnx very much. And tnx for support, stick around will be nice giveaways.

Btw u can see how that is in Japan few people drinking tie and "protesting" its not like here where everything burns to the ground in protests.


Thank u Igor.

[ponjava]

Mt.Gox Weekend Trade: News, Analysis

 William Blackwell  22/02/2014  Bitcoin, Bitcoin Analysis, Mt. Gox, News

At 07h00 UTC Mt.Gox BTCUSD price skirted below $100 once more, continuing the relentless decline since the break of $250 on Thursday. Volatility is increasing as traders take advantage of low weekend liquidity to chase price for profits.

Questions about where this crash is going to find a bottom abound, since a rout in Mt.Gox’s exchange price negatively affects other exchange prices. At the time of writing, there are no reports of specific events that may be leading this decline and the only reasonable conclusion is that negative expectations for next week may be the cause.

Update 12h58 UTC

Mt.Gox Transaction testing is being reported on Reddit. The author speculates that the price advance from $100 to $140 may be attributable to the “freeing up” of stuck transactions. However, this may prove unlikely, as the price structure that unfolded to $140 is corrective in nature, indicating additional price lows may follow.

 

Views

The bad news surrounding Mt.Gox as a result of long running exchange software issues, as well as a morass of customer service issues has lead to widespread public criticism and votes of no confidence in its management.

Said Andreas Antonopoulos in a tweet yesterday:

 

The Gox relocation, delay and more bad communication shows that the problem is one of management. Won’t be fixed with a patch.

 

And from the ever outspoken Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge:

 

The disruption of Mt.Gox will be another test for Bitcoin… a test Bitcoin will survive… For Mt. Gox though, I think it’s pretty much game over.

 

After-hours Trade – Analysis

It has to be pointed out, however, that for many currencies that trade over the weekend there a phenomenon called “Filling the Gap”. It works like this:

Due to the majority of trades being executed during office hours, the effect of thinner weekend trade is often to push price to extremes – extremes that are less likely during busy market hours when the market has more participants who tend to oppose one another – thereby minimizing the duration of price movement in a single direction (up or down).

Since weekend trade is less “liquid”, price can be pushed into areas where the majority of traders (now absent) would have opposed such movement.

After the weekend, when day traders return to their desks they will notice a large gap between the closing price of Friday and the opening price of the Monday session. It is standard practice to trade in the direction of the price gap until Friday’s price has been re-established. This is called ”Filling the Gap” or “Gap Trading” and whenever weekend trade creates such a gap there is a 99% probability that early trade on Monday will close the price gap.

If trade on Saturday and Sunday establishes a price level below $110 then we will most likely see trade returning price to $110 on Monday. Bear this fact in mind when seeing reports forecasting doom for Monday, and bear in mind the reason why weekend trade leaves price vulnerable to a strong direction push.
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Gold_Selection_22Feb14_1447.png

[ponjava]

Turmoil in Ukraine Shows Bitcoin’s Potential as a Global Currency

 Kyle Torpey  21/02/2014

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ukraineATMs-300x224.jpeg
The current political and economic environment in Ukraine has led to credit downgrades for local banks, a currency devaluation, capital controls, and ATMs running out of cash. Before this article continues there is one thing that needs to be mentioned: Bitcoin users not affected. While Bitcoin obviously couldn’t help when it comes to preventing the violence currently taking place on the streets of Kiev, it at least helps people who want to protect their wealth in times of political uncertainty. Bitcoin still needs to get through some problems of its own when it comes to stability, but the current events in Ukraine can be used as a case study for why cryptocurrency is so important to the entire world.

A Political Crisis Leads to a Currency Crisis

The hryvnia has already declined more than 10% against the US dollar since November, and Tim Ash from Standard Bank believes this trend could continue over the next few months. He was recently interviewed by Reuters, and he claimed that it could soon take 11 hryvni to equal 1 dollar. In a situation where Ukraine is not able to get more economic assistance from the international community, Ash believes we could see a situation where it takes 15 hryvni to buy 1 dollar. Although this kind of currency crisis currently leads to a thriving black market in dollars and euros, it could be bitcoins that become the more practical safe haven for people in the future.
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ukrainedollarchart.png
hryvnia dollar chart bitcoin
The hryvnia has declined against the US dollar. Chart via XE.com.
In a future where bitcoins are a widely-used international currency, citizens of a country experiencing political turmoil would not need to worry about the devaluation of their local currency. People holding hryvni in their Ukrainian bank accounts or in the form of cash under their mattresses have basically been robbed of 10% of their savings since November. If some predictions turn out to be true, they could be losing close to 50% of their savings as a solution for government debt is not found. If bitcoins were able to reach a stable price, the Ukrainian people would not have to watch their savings disappear as a political uprising slowed down economic activity in the surrounding areas.

Bank Downgrades and Empty ATMs Don’t Affect Bitcoin Users

Various banks in Ukraine have been downgraded by Fitch and Moody’s over the past few months, and these downgrades are due to these banks’ exposure to Ukrainian government bonds. Ukraine could be headed towards a bank bailout or bail-in situation, and either “solution” should be viewed as a lose for the Ukrainian people. If the government defaults on its debts, then most bank depositors in Ukraine will need to take a “haircut“.

Residents of Kiev are also emptying stores shelves and ATMs around the city. People don’t want to leave their homes and wish to hold as much cash as possible. It is not yet clear if this is an actual run on the banks or just people who would rather have access to cash rather than cards during these uncertain times.

One of the obvious benefits of Bitcoin is that you don’t need to trust a third party with your money. Cash under the mattress is a classic option when you don’t want to trust banks, but you can’t send cash through the Internet. Holding bitcoins in a brain wallet, paper wallet, or cold storage hardware device is also much more secure than putting a bunch of cash under one’s mattress. There’s no need to empty out a local ATM when you can store all of your bitcoins in your brain. The only issue here is being able to transact in bitcoins in an even worse situation where there is no Internet or electricity. Having said that, there are bigger issues at hand than being able to spend money if there’s no electricity to be found.

You Can’t Place Capital Controls on Bitcoin

As the value of the Ukrainian hryvnia was declining in early February, the Ukrainian Central Bank started to limit the amount of foreign currency that Ukrainians could purchase. The limit is currently set at just under $6,000 per month. This restriction has been able to prevent continued damage to the hryvnia’s value against other currencies, but whether or not it will be able to help over the long term remains an unanswered question. Although the intention of this policy is to prevent the local currency from falling in value, it also limits the options of the Ukrainian people who just want to find a safe haven for their savings.

Bitcoin users are not affected by capital controls, and it doesn’t matter if those economic restrictions are found in Ukraine or Argentina. Capital flight to another country wouldn’t even exist in a Bitcoin economy because bitcoins would be a global currency. There would be no reason to flee the bitcoin because the declining national economy would not have an effect on the price of bitcoins. Having said that, bitcoins can offer a way around capital controls while most of the world is still on a fiat standard. Governments always try to micromanage macro economies, and they usually just make matters worse when they try to limit what people can do with their own money. Whether it’s the United States government paying farmers to destroy crops and livestock during the Great Depression or China devaluing their currency to increase exports to other countries, government involvement in the economy usually has negative side effects for everyone.

Bitcoin Still Needs to Sort Out Its Own Issues

While Bitcoin has the potential to solve a lot of issues involved with the economies of unstable nations, we’re still far away from it being viewed as a “safe haven”. As we’ve seen over the past few months, regulatory uncertainty and goxxings still have a negative impact on price stability. Bitcoin has a lot of growing up to do, but you have to wonder how much stabler the price will be once most nations have stated their regulatory intentions and MtGox is behind us. A currency that swings 10% in either direction on a daily basis would actually be preferable to some current fiat currencies, especially when you throw in the aforementioned abilities to get around economic restrictions and banks. Relatively large swings in price over the short term are sometimes preferable to a 50% decline over a year or two. The success of Bitcoin certainly isn’t set in stone, but it could definitely become a solution to many of the economic ailments facing specific parts of the world today.

[lyth0s]

Keep the news coming

[hostmaster]

good idea

[MICRO]

Keep the news coming

Will surly do Also i will be doing this in much better format, with category's and all sorts of things. This is just a beta .
Tnx guys for ur support.

[MICRO]

How Cash Would Be Seen by the Media if Invented Today
Antonis Polemitis (@polemitis) | Published on February 23, 2014 at 10:50 GMT | Analysis, Crime, Lifestyle, Wallets

Antonis Polemitis is Managing Director of Ledra Capital. He has written a series of blog posts about bitcoin which can be found here. In this article, he casts a satirical eye over how a new currency ‘cash’ would be described by the press if invented today.

Breaking News: Bizarre, Shadowy, Paper-Based Payment System Being Rolled Out Worldwide!

World governments announced a plan today to allow citizens to anonymously carry parts of their wealth on their person and exchange it with others using small pieces of colourful paper.

The paper is printed with nationalistic and Masonic imagery, along with numbers that purportedly represent the amount of wealth each piece of paper represents (if the paper is not a counterfeit).

Each of these pieces of paper is formally a ‘note’ from each nation’s central bank, but they are also attracting the term ‘cash’. This is a technical matter that is too complex to cover in our basic primer. Suffice it to say, that it is representative of the complexity and user-unfriendliness of this new system.

one million dollar bills
So-called ‘dollar bills’, or ‘notes’, as they are formally known.
Are ‘bills’ too complex?

These pieces of papers (also known as ‘bills’, ‘dollar bills’, ‘George Washingtons’ or ‘Dead Presidents’ among the shadowy community of anti-banking libertarians who have been the primary users of cash to date) will differ from country to country and are not redeemable outside national borders.

In what will come as a surprise to generations who have grown up with calculators and computers, bills only come in fixed denominations, requiring users to maintain a large number of these pieces of paper that must be aggregated to execute a transaction and then re-aggregated to ‘make change’.

The latter is a complex process of returning to the payee the excess of the payment using yet other bills. (Don’t worry if this sounds complex, we had trouble understanding it ourselves at first and it is certainly not ready for the average consumer in its current form.)

Mike Smith, VP of Employee Training at Sears has said:

“I cannot imagine training tens of thousands of our employees to use cash, verify that it is genuine, and learn to ‘make change’ without making errors. This is going to require a wholesale installation of special change-making hardware – so-called ‘cash registers’ –  and millions of dollars of employee training, while creating long lines and delays for consumers. Furthermore, we would need to adopt new security procedures and armed guards to avoid theft of the physical bills while in the store or during transport to our bank. We cannot see ourselves adopting cash under these conditions.”

Perfect tool for criminals

Criminal with cashThe launch of cash has provoked an immediate reaction from law-enforcement agencies worldwide that universally condemned the development.

Mike Smith, the recently confirmed FBI Director, had this to say:

“‘Cash’ is a 100% anonymous and untraceable payments technology. It is like a weapon of mass destruction launched against law enforcement. It is the perfect payment mechanism for criminals, drug cartels, terrorists, prostitution rings and money launderers. We don’t know how we will be able to combat such a technology and we fully expect that a new generation of super-criminals will emerge, working in the shadows of a world where they can conduct their illicit affairs without leaving a trace.”

Even officials within the banking system have their doubts about the new plan.

Banking Superintendent of New York State Mike Smith said: “I can’t think of any reason that a law-abiding individual would want to use ‘cash’. At a bare minimum, we believe there should be a licensing procedure for individuals or businesses that plan to use cash – a ‘cash license’, as it were.”

This license would limit cash to trustworthy individuals who keep detailed, auditable records of all their cash transactions in order to keep New York safe from criminals, he added.

Others have concerns about forgery and counterfeiting.

“Ultimately, even with all the fancy inks, ‘cash’ is just a piece of paper. We fully expect criminal groups and rogue nation states to print fake cash in order to profit or to disrupt the economies of their enemies,” said Mike Smith, an analyst at Stratfor.

“In the interim, we are certain that cash will trade a discount in the real world, given the risk to a counterparty of accepting a forged piece of paper; no doubt cash is a huge step back from the modern cryptography in place throughout our current financial system.”

Consumers unprotected

Though hard to imagine, cash operates with no consumer protection at all. If your ‘bills’ are stolen or lost, they are gone forever.

“I just don’t understand why there is nobody that I can call to reinstate my ‘cash’ if I lose it,” says Mike Smith, a businessman from Toledo. “What type of idiotic wealth and payment system doesn’t maintain transaction and ownership records?”

Moreover, there appears to be no authentication mechanism associated with cash payments or transfers, let alone one that matches modern security standards. Once someone has gained physical control of your ‘bills’, they are free to spend or use them as they wish and there is no way to reverse the transaction, stop them or even identify who has stolen them.

Even simple destruction of a bill, which, as you recall, is just a piece of paper, could result in losses. According to the Director of the newly founded Bureau of Engraving and Printing, mutilated bills that are more than 51% destroyed must be mailed in for a special investigation that will determine if they should be replaced or not.

‘Physical wallets’ reveal security flaw

WalletProponents of cash have dismissed these concerns saying that various hardware manufacturers, such as Coach and Gucci, will shortly be releasing ‘hardware wallets’ in leather and suede. These wallets are meant to hold the bills and fit into a pocket or purse.

“Once your bills are safely ensconced in your Gucci wallet and securely placed in your pants pocket [the front pocket is recommended as a ‘best practice’ for security], it is almost impossible for them to be stolen, lost or destroyed,” said Mike Smith, VP of Communications for Gucci NA.

Some early adopters, however, have reported that the hardware wallets have security flaws.

“I was out in Bangkok two weeks ago, at a bar, and I forgot my Gucci wallet there,” said Mike Smith, a visiting tourist. “When I returned the next morning, my wallet was there but my cash was gone!”

We contacted Gucci regarding this hacking attack, but a spokesperson would not comment “about confidential customer financial matters”.

Even criminals have not been immune to the risks of cash. The notorious ‘Silk Road’ drug-dealing marketplace mysteriously closed last week, after vendors and customers left envelopes full of cash (on which they had very clearly written their names) in an anonymous drop-box managed by the exchange.

“Theft of the cash due to a bug in the envelope-sealing process,” was cited as the cause.

While technical experts believe that it might be possible that the glue on the envelope was not correctly applied, they also warn that a ‘bill’ is basically a private and public key at the same time, and note that there might be dangers involved in letting anonymous criminals hold the private keys to your wealth.

Physical presence required

In what might be most unusual limitation on cash, it only works for payments within 26 inches or less (the so-called ‘arm’s length transaction’, as hackers in the community have colourfully dubbed it), because it has to be handed from one (human) party to another to execute the transaction.

This requirement for the exchange of cash is widely thought to be a fatal flaw by traditionalists.

Mike Smith, VP of Retail Banking at Chase said:

“A form of payment that cannot be used at a distance, cannot be used for e-commerce, cannot be used by mobile devices, cannot be used for machine-based transactions, or cannot be scripted or programmed, cannot be thought of as a payment system. I will admit, as a form of performance art, ‘cash’ transactions are an amusing experiment, but this has no applicability in the real world of banking, finance or commerce.”

He added: “Furthermore, given cash’s association with criminal activities, we will be refusing to offer banking services and terminating the accounts of any customer that uses cash in a business or personal capacity. It is the only way we can ensure we remain compliant with our regulatory obligations.”

Remarkably, if you attempt to use cash in a different country from the one that issued it, it will categorically be rejected.

In order to use cash abroad, you will have to go to designated points, usually in airports or certain banks, with limited hours of operation, that will ‘exchange’ your bills for others printed by the country that you are visiting.

These ‘exchanges’ have high fees – usually 2-3% for each exchange, meaning that tourist will lose 5% of their cash or more on a typical trip just in these exchange costs. This seems extraordinarily high for what is, ultimately, an exercise in multiplication or division.

A step backward for economics

Economists are flabbergasted that lawmakers have allowed cash to be adopted despite their strong objections. A key policy tool of central banks has been the use of positive and negative interest rates to manage economic growth. It appears that this will not be possible with cash.

Mike Smith, a leading economics blogger for the New York Times said: “This is a sad day for macro-economics. If cash ever catches on in any meaningful sense, it will reduce our control over the levers of the economy significantly, by providing a mechanism for depositors to opt out of negative interest rates. Given the fact that it might keep us from preventing the next depression and will definitely reduce tax collections, one could even consider it ‘evil’.”

Environmental and health impacts

Environmental damageEnvironmentalists expressed concerns about the impact of cash on the environment.

Mike Smith, recently appointed Executive Director of the Sierra Club said: “You would have thought that in 2014, we would have moved beyond pesticide- and water-intensive cotton farming [retracted: cutting down trees], treating the cotton with dangerous inks, and transporting it with fossil fuels, only to represent a value, such as ‘20’, that can be represented electronically at effectively no cost to the environment. When will we ever learn?”

Public health officials also warned that cash could be an excellent vector for disease transmission.

“We tested several ‘bills’ in our labs recently and discovered that the average bill has 20 times more bacteria than a toilet seat,” said Mike Smith, Director of Research at the Mayo Clinic.  “Our advice is that people should avoid cash in general and only handle it if absolutely necessary.“

“Children, the elderly and immuno-compromised individuals should not handle cash under any circumstances.”

What comes next?

Proponents of cash think it will ultimately be a widely adopted technology that will spread around the world, enabling in-person, mid-tier transactions (not micro-payments, but not mega-payments either) in a manner that is invulnerable to electric or Internet outages and that will usher in a new era of more ‘human’ commerce.

We try to keep an open mind at this publication toward new technology, but, to date, we have a hard time seeing the positive case for cash.

Certainly criminal groups will take advantage of cash’s perfect anonymity to wreak havoc on law enforcement and tax collection, something that is deeply undesirable.

Among law-abiding citizens, we can envision some possible adoption in dense urban hipster communities like Williamsburg, where ‘wallets’, ‘cash’ and ‘making change’ could be yet another reflection of their tongue-in-cheek view of modern societal systems.

Other than that, it would be hard to recommend that the average consumer or merchant becomes involved in what is still today a very buggy system, filled with risk, inconvenience, high transaction costs, and possible disease transmission.

Even if handled perfectly, cash will certainly tar your business and personal life with the seedy reputation of the drug dealers, terrorists, money launderers and anti-establishment anarchists who use it today, threatening business and banking relationships, and raising eyebrows among law enforcement and your community.

[MICRO]

How Bitcoin Could Revolutionise Accountancy
Nick Chowdrey (@nickchef88) | Published on February 23, 2014 at 09:45 GMT | Analysis, Companies

Nick Chowdrey is a business and technology writer and proud digital native. Currently based in Brighton, UK, he is a technical writer at Crunch Accounting and co-founder of Brighton-based bitcoin community, Bitcoin Brighton. Here, he explores whether or not bitcoin could render accountants obsolete.

Towards the end of last year, CoinDesk published a piece suggesting four career fields bitcoin could replace. One of these careers was accounting. I wanted to investigate further into whether this could actually happen.

It’s no secret that online accounting firms are already disrupting the industry, offering a cheaper and often more convenient service than their ‘bricks and mortar’ ancestors.

Moving accounting online makes the process quicker and more convenient. Users can update their accounts using smartphone apps and ‘optical character recognition’ helps to automate data entry. It doesn’t take too much of a leap to see how the Bitcoin protocol could further enhance these processes.

How bitcoin can help

On a basic level, the payment network could be used by firms to more easily accept international customers. You’d expect this to increase competition and it could eventually lead to offline firms across the world being priced out of the market.

But even if this does happen, surely these online firms will still need to employ some human accountants? Actually, it seems that not only could Bitcoin be used to automate a lot of accounting functions, it could, in some cases, actually do a better job.

For example, one of the most important accounting tasks is balancing the books – checking that incoming and outgoing transactions match an individual or company’s actual bank balance. Modern financial accounting uses a ‘double entry’ system which requires two separate accounts to be updated depending on the transaction.

For example, if you receive a payment of £100 you increase a credits account by 100 and decrease a debits account by 100, and vice versa if you pay someone £100. If the books are balanced, the debit account plus the credit account should equal zero.

Every entry is dated, with additional information added if necessary, making it possible for accountants to go back through the records and find the problem if the books aren’t balanced. This is a straightforward way for people to trust their own accounts.

Increasingly, however, outside parties like tax collectors and investors also need to trust that a set of accounts is accurate and fully disclosed, requiring expensive audit services. This is where bitcoin comes in.

Triple entry

What would be required is for every transaction between a debtor/creditor to be processed through the Bitcoin network, as well as a record being kept in both the debtor and creditor’s private, offline accounts.

This creates a system of ‘triple entry’ bookkeeping where accounting entries are distributed across the Bitcoin network and cryptographically sealed, making the falsification or destruction of the records practically impossible and ultimately reducing fraud.

This would be an excellent way to save time and money for an open and transparent business that wants to, for example, publicly share its accounts with a potential investor; or for a freelancer who needs to submit a tax return.

Also, thanks to projects like Mastercoin and Ethereum, which will enable other properties to be transferred over the Bitcoin network, the cryptographic transactions wouldn’t even have to involve the transfer of any actual bitcoins, or anything of real monetary value.

It would be more like an exchange of contracts that each party cryptographically signs, saying: “I promise that I paid X party X amount of X currency.” Having said this, it would ultimately make more sense for these contracts to execute the actual payments too, which is also perfectly possible.

At this point, it’s worth saying that bookkeeping is by no means the only thing that accountants do. Certainly, at online accounting firms today, accountants take on a more advisory role, spending less time on tiresome data entry and more time speaking to actual clients and investigating their problems.

This could lead to better service, perhaps explaining the increasing popularity of online accountants.

So, will Bitcoin totally replace accountants? I’m not sure it’s possible. Will it streamline and optimise the industry, just as we expect it to do in other areas of finance? I think almost definitely.

[MICRO]

Bitcoin price info from markets:


Bitcoin price average (bitcoinaverage.com):

*Note: I will be posting this twice per day at around 12:00 CET and 00:00 CET +-1h

[ponjava]

BREAKING: Bitcoin Price Surges Amid Rumored Testing of Withdrawals
 
   Tom Boice  22/02/2014


MtGox has allegedly begun testing withdrawals, seeing a 200% surge in exchange rates.

This post’s updates have largely subsided, any additional breaks may be a separate article.

UPDATES:
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/mtgox-price-spike-300x143.png

Original Reddit thread about withdrawal signs here.

1:55am JST: 1400BTC buy order on BTC-e.

2:03am JST: MtGox exchange rate now up 215% in just under 2 hours.  $280

2:12am JST: Massive sell-offs on MtGox dropping the exchange rate back to $200, still up a little for the hour.  Rumors of market manipulation and also insider trading abound.

2:30am JST:  Surges and sells each getting smaller, volume appears to be diminishing, price settling near $230, a 50% increase for the hour.

uncertainty chart
2:20 JST, MtGox, This is what uncertainty, rumors, and manipulation look like in a market.
2:50am JST:  BTC China, which has also seen the price surging, announced a decrease in fees, the first since last December’s Chinese regulation scare.
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/uncertainty-chart-300x222.png

2:52am JST:  Core developer Greg Maxwell, “MtGox still authoring invalid transactions”

3:21am JST:  MtGox price falters as Greg Maxwell’s statement gains attention, below $200 at the moment, but gaining again.

3:38am JST:  All exchange prices still trending down, no fresh announcements or news.  Personally, I am beginning to see the manipulation narrative as the most accurate.

4:11am JST:  All quiet with the exception of the Maxwell reddit thread, more updates will follow if something significant happens.  Thank you for following this happening with CryptoCoinsNews.com.

Background:

Despite the entire bitcoin ecosystem being effected by a denial-of-service attack exploiting a characteristic of the Bitcoin protocol,  MtGox received the brunt of consumer outrage after they suddenly halted bitcoin withdrawals and blamed a “bug in the bitcoin protocol.”  Critics cited out of date and amateur programming in the exchange’s system for its woes, as MtGox is the only exchange still experiencing disrupted service since the attacks.

In the last week the MtGox price has skirted the $100 range, due to skepticism about MtGox’s solvency, and their continuing lack of information about when withdrawals will resume.

[MICRO]

Market-Based Reactions to New Bitcoin Regulation
Jon Matonis (@jonmatonis) | Published on February 23, 2014 at 12:19 GMT | Analysis, Bitcoin protocol, News, Regulation

Every action has a reaction, and the world of government regulation is no different. Recently, the regulatory chatter has picked up around Bitcoin and it appears to be focused on two major mandates as perceived by the financial regulators.

Number one is the attempt to apply invasive technology-specific money transmitter regulation to a technology that doesn’t seem to fit into any of their other regulatory boxes. Licenses are being crafted to ensure the same level of AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and KYC (Know Your Customer) guidelines for bitcoin companies as for other types of existing financial institutions.

Number two is protecting us “from ourselves” under the standard guise of consumer protection and fraudulent operators. In an interview on The Bitcoin Group, Andreas Antonopoulos describes a self-regulating method where the consumer protection holes can be solved by free market-enforced exchange solvency and implemented cryptography solutions.

New York-Style Licensing

Yellow cab in Times Square New York

Regarding technology-specific regulation at the state level, New York has put forth a bad idea with an unfortunate name, mostly because it sounds like an innovative Silicon Valley startup which it definitely is not.

It is, however, a grand attempt from a local regulator to overlay an inappropriate technology-specific regulation within the confines of the great state of New York.

Unfortunately, this will cause greater hardship for New Yorkers than it will for the bitcoin businesses that will most likely seek out other favorable jurisdictions. If New York wanted to drive new growth businesses away from the state, then this would be the way to do it. These antics are not predicted to be emulated.

Markets perceive regulation as ‘damage’ and route around it. This is true with Internet-related damage and it is equally true with Bitcoin-related damage.

For example, artificial damage to bitcoin’s semi-anonymous properties could be inflicted by tracking specific bitcoin addresses at the exchange endpoint level and beyond. Perhaps mandated by law in the near future, this type of regulatory action would be akin to to registering bank note serial numbers during a routine cash withdrawal.

Most people would reel in horror at the prospect of this because they naturally believe that they have a right to use their cash as they see fit without serial number tracking.

Surveillance techniques

CCTV

Coin tracking and coin validation schemes are new types of surveillance techniques that Bitcoin’s public transaction ledger enables. Interestingly, either the free market or the law could spawn these invasive techniques as a business model.

In the case of an exchange seeking to bolster its compliance reputation, it might turn to an independent service provider that analyzes bitcoin address data and associated traffic patterns known to be involved in crimes.

Of course, the major underlying and still unresolved problem here is that subjective judgement must be exercised in data analysis of this type which could unduly harm the downstream owners of fungible bitcoin. That is, if anyone held title in bitcoin to begin with.

Markets provide solutions to these cases of bitcoin privacy ‘damage’ and this is where it becomes tricky for regulators. They are practically in a no-win situation because regulators must use their tools to regulate, but the more they do, the more they inadvertently encourage market-based responses.

Fortuitously, Bitcoin comes with built-in plausible deniability due to the many ‘mixing’ hops that can be traversed both on-block chain and off-block chain. Unless the user’s private key is seized, no one can prove with absolute certainty that a particular amount of bitcoin is owned by an individual without their consent. In financial privacy terms, this is referred to as “knowledge of balance” privacy and it is a key element of overall financial privacy.

Mixing services

As cited in ‘The Politics of Bitcoin Mixing Services’, mixing services for bitcoin may emerge as the next frontier in the battle for financial privacy. Coin mixing services for cryptocurrencies do not violate any laws and they merely attempt to re-balance natural deficiencies in the protocol.

According to CNBC, Ben Lawsky and New York’s Department of Financial Services are “still wrestling with whether to ban or restrict the use of ‘tumblers,’ which obscure the record and source of virtual currencies.” Lawsky said tumblers are a concern to law enforcement although they might have legitimate uses.

“Society can have hope that if privacy becomes disrespected, the market can and will provide cryptographic solutions to restore balance.”

Is it even possible for New York to ban tumblers that exist on the global Internet? How will the cryptographic free market respond to encroaching regulation into the market for Bitcoin?

Zerocoin and CoinJoin represent two attempts to restore the balance in making digital cash as private as physical cash today. They operate in a decentralized manner without requiring trust in a third party.

Originating from Johns Hopkins University, the first Zerocoin plan was a proposed extension to the Bitcoin payment network that added anonymity to Bitcoin payments and used provably secure cryptographic techniques to ensure that Bitcoins cannot be traced.

After refusing to gain traction among the bitcoin user and developer communities, creators Matthew Green and Ian Miers decided to launch Zerocoin as its own independent cryptocurrency complete with separate block chain and reward incentive system. The Economist refers to Zerocoin as “washing virtual money”.

CoinJoin, first described by Gregory Maxwell as a method of increased coin privacy for the real world, is an urgently needed improvement, because:

“Bitcoin is often promoted as a tool for privacy but the only privacy that exists in Bitcoin comes from pseudonymous addresses which are fragile and easily compromised through reuse, ‘taint’ analysis, tracking payments, IP address monitoring nodes, web-spidering, and many other mechanisms. Once broken this privacy is difficult and sometimes costly to recover.”

Involving no changes to the Bitcoin protocol but requiring specific wallet implementations, CoinJoin operates as a unique transaction style for Bitcoin users to dramatically improve their privacy.

Both efforts succeed where the original Bitcoin protocol stopped short. In direct response to increasing and potentially onerous regulations, Zerocoin and CoinJoin stand as pillars of financial privacy in a world where surveillance has run amok.

Ultimately, society can have hope that if privacy becomes disrespected, the market can and will provide cryptographic solutions to restore the balance. If Bitcoin is to succeed, that is the real challenge for the talented individuals and leading companies in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

[MICRO]

Following the Money: Trends in Bitcoin Venture Capital Investment
Garrick Hileman (@garrickhileman) | Published on February 23, 2014 at 16:00 GMT | Analysis, Companies, Investors, Startups

CoinDesk is releasing its ‘State of Bitcoin 2014′ report on Tuesday, which takes an in-depth look into the evolution of bitcoin and the potential hurdles it is still yet to face.

This article is the first of a two-part series drawn from the report. The series looks at the trends in venture capital investment in bitcoin.

It assesses how venture investment in bitcoin to date compares with other related investment sectors (eg financial technology), or previous major waves of investment (eg the Internet).

It also examines the types of bitcoin companies venture investors have focused their funding on.

Look out for part two, which will be published tomorrow and focuses on which regions have been receiving the lion’s share of venture investment in bitcoin.

Venture investment: early Internet vs early bitcoin

Venture capitalist and Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen recently compared the current understanding of bitcoin’s overall potential, as well as its current stage of development, to the Internet circa 1993 and the PC in 1975.

Does the level of venture capital invested in bitcoin to date reflect Andreessen’s assessment?

Table 1: VC Investments in Bitcoin Companies, 2012-Present

VC-investments-bitcoin-companies
Sources: CoinDesk, Dow Jones VentureSource, VentureScanner

Comparing this bitcoin investment to date with investment in the early Internet, (Table 2) reveals that that significantly less funding (approximately 20%) has been allocated to bitcoin compared to Internet startups, which pulled in just over $500m in venture investment in 1995.

Table 2: VC Investments in US Internet Companies, 1995

vc-investments-in-us-internet-companies
Sources: PricewaterhouseCoopers, National Venture Capital Association

With regards to the above comparison, there are several important caveats. First, due to data availability limitations there is no way to compare the Internet investments circa 1993 with bitcoin 2014, as 1995 is the earliest year in which we have Internet investment data.[1]

The above Internet investment data also reflect only US investments as global data are not available, so while the vast majority of early internet investment was US-based the $507m figure is likely understated for these reasons.

On the bitcoin side, the $97.5m in venture capital that has been publicly reported underestimates the total, which would include unreported venture investment, by tens of millions of dollars.

For example, we know that Andreessen Horowiz has invested just under $50m in bitcoin-related startups, and that Coinbase only received $25m in the Series B in which Andreessen Horowiz participated.

Another Andreessen Horowiz-backed startup, Ripple, has received two rounds of undisclosed funding, indicating that the company may have received upwards of $20m. CoinDesk is also aware of, but not privy to disclose, other bitcoin startups that have received million-dollar-plus funding rounds, and these figures are, therefore, excluded from this analysis.

Finally, it has been estimated that upwards of $200m has been invested in bitcoin mining hardware and infrastructure to date, a figure which exceeds even a less conservative estimate of the total venture capital invested in bitcoin to date. Perhaps the appropriate Internet analogy to this mining hardware investment is to compare it to the significant fiber optic and broadband infrastructure investments that were occurring alongside the growth in Internet startups.

Chart 1: Number of VC-backed Companies: early Internet vs early bitcoin

number-of-VC-backed-Companies-early-Internet-vs-early-bitcoin
Sources: PricewaterhouseCoopers, National Venture Capital Association, CoinDesk, Dow Jones VentureSource, VentureScanner

Looking at the number of deals from 1995, we can see a total of 156 total funding rounds, with nearly two-thirds of the rounds being first sequence financings.

In contrast, all but one bitcoin financing (Coinbase’s November 2013 $25m Series B) have been first or seed round investments.

In short, the data fit Andreessen’s story that the current bitcoin investment lifecycle is relatively less mature than the Internet’s circa 1995, and perhaps more akin to where the Internet investment environment stood in 1993.

Chart 2: VC Investment in 1995 Internet Companies vs bitcoin

VC-Investment-in-1995-Internet-Companies-vs-bitcoin
Sources: PricewaterhouseCoopers, National Venture Capital Association, CoinDesk, Dow Jones VentureSource, VentureScanner

Looking at the data on VC investments in Internet companies for 1995, we can also see that a much greater sum of funding was directed towards Internet companies than has been directed at bitcoin to date (Chart 2).

In 1995 there was $508m invested in Internet companies, an amount which was very close to an even split between first sequence and later stage financings. In other words, by 1995 over 50% of the funding was going to just one-third of the venture-backed Internet companies.

Overall, if VCs are proven correct that bitcoin represents an opportunity on par with the Internet then we can expect investment in bitcoin to increase by several orders of magnitude from current levels.

30 VC-backed bitcoin startups across five distinct sectors
There have been 30 bitcoin companies in total that have received publicly-reported venture funding to date (see Table 3).

Note: A number of additional companies not included in the table are rumoured to have received non-publicly disclosed venture capital investment.

The universe of venture-backed bitcoin companies can be broadly classified into the following five distinct sectors:

Exchanges – companies that operate a bitcoin trading platform (eg BTC China)
Financial Services – the broadest category, including everything from bitcoin ATM operators (eg BitAccess) to white label exchange providers (eg Buttercoin) to alternative payment networks (eg Ripple) to bitcoin gift cards (eg GogoCoin)
Mining Hardware – producers of bitcoin mining equipment like ASICs (eg BitFury)
Payment Processors – outsourced virtual alternative currency payment solutions (eg BitPay)
Wallets – secure storage and transfer mechanisms for digital alternative currency. Several payment processors also have wallets (eg Gliph)

Chart 3: Sector distribution of Bitcoin VC investment

Sector-distribution-Bitcoin-VC-investment

Payment Processors lead the way in terms of total share of VC investment (38%), followed by Financial Services (23%) and Exchanges (14%). Pure-play wallets are the smallest category at 1% of total VC investment.

It is interesting to note the relatively small VC investment in mining hardware companies (13%) given that it is very likely the largest legal revenue generating sector of the bitcoin economy with over $200m in mining hardware revenue to date.

Table 4: VC Investments by Industry, 2013 ($m) for United States

vc-investments-industry-2013

While by no means insignificant, the $97.5m in publicly disclosed venture capital invested in bitcoin companies to date (Table 1) is relatively small compared with other investment sectors that have been beneficiaries of significant venture capital investment (Table 4).

The grey shaded areas of Table 4 are intended to highlight bitcoin-related investment sectors. For example, investments in bitcoin wallets could perhaps fall into more than one category, including Software and Financial Services.

Part two of this series, which will be published tomorrow, examines where the majority of VC investment in bitcoin companies has come from. Silicon Valley, surely? Not necessarily …

——————————————————————————————————

[1] Notes on sources and methodology: unfortunately, the earliest industry-wide venture capital historical data is for 1995, two full years after the year Andreessen compares the Internet to bitcoin (1993). Bitcoin investment data spans 2012-early 2014 because the vast majority of bitcoin investments to date occurred in 2013.

[MICRO]

BTC China Lowers Commission Fees
William Blackwell  22/02/2014  Posted 21 hours ago

BTC China is open for business and is offering lower trade commissions starting 24 February 2014.

From their website:

         Starting at 12 noon (China time) on February 24, 2014, BTC China will lower the trading commission fee from 0.3% to 0.1% for all users.

         For market-makers who place limit orders that add to market liquidity, they will be exempt from the trading commission, and will additionally get a 0.1% market-maker rebate!

Sign of Change

In an exclusive interview with CryptocoinsNews two weeks ago, Bobby Lee outlined the positive changes for China based exchanges. The current announcement is effectively BTC China swinging open its doors and saying: “Open for business!”

This is good news for Bitcoin, considering the masses of liquidity and sheer volume of trade BTC China brought to the Bitcoin market before the PBoC reigned in exuberance in November.

Popular opinion has it that BTC China could be the best candidate to take over the lead from Mt.Gox – along with its customers and market share. Additionally, many feel that BTC China, although having it’s own customer account validation process, does not have anybody in the West looking over it’s shoulder at customer’s private data, nor a stick big enough to demand that the Chinese exchange divulge personal information or transaction details.

In his recent CCN interview, Bobby Lee had the following to say:

 It appears to us that the reason there was a hard government crackdown with a one punch, two punch in December is because they thought there was too much volatility. The government has a right to think it is too volatile.

We need a few months for the dust to settle, so the Chinese consumers regain confidence. There is demand for Bitcoin in China. Bitcoin’s features remain, it hasn’t become less scarce, less decentralised or less a store of value.

Hang dai, Mr Lee, Hang dai.

[MICRO]

AMD ‘could be devastated’ by Mining
William Blackwell  22/02/2014  Posted 22 hours ago

In an article published today, Daily Finance argues that cryptocurrency mining may be hampering development at AMD.

The AMD flagship graphics card, Radeon R9 290X, is a hard-to-find commodity out there. Online retailers such as NewEgg and Amazon either list it as ‘Out of Stock’ or ‘Special Order’. Trying to find any half-decent AMD graphics card at a Bitcoin-centric retailer is futile. They’re just not available – and when one is for sale – it is priced at a premium.

Everyone knows: these pieces of high-grade technology are the heart of the best – and most profitable – home-built mining rigs.

So, if their high-end graphics products are so sought after, how can this possibly be to the detriment of AMD?

Consider that the R9 290x was developed as a PC gaming card, specifically introduced into the market to compete with NVIDIA’s Geforce GTX780. However, cryptocurrency miners found that the R9 has excellent hashing performance and bought it up en masse. NVIDIA cards, for various reasons, do not compare well with equivalent AMD products and chip-for-chip, the AMD will always out-perform its rival.

Instead of the R9 fulfilling its role as competition to the Geforce GTX780, it was diverted into a new, unintended market as mining rig GPU. PC gamers, unable to find the R9 in the market opted for the next best thing, namely the Geforce, and NVIDIA retained dominance in the gaming ecosystem.

Nvidia and AMD, the two dominant players in the gaming market, have been locked in a strategic battle for market dominance. AMD’s Mantle API was supposed to be pervasive amongst gamers – had the R9 fulfilled its function of showcasing the new Mantle system, and it’s SDK. Dominance of gaming, on both the gamer PC and the game designer fronts, would have secured AMD’s market share for several years.

NVIDIA’s strategy is different and more far-reaching. NVIDIA is targeting the phenomenon whereby gamers tend to change cards a lot yet stick with the same monitor for years. G-Sync is a proprietary architecture whereby next generation NVIDIA cards will depend upon – yet enhance – NVIDIA G-Sync technology embedded in the monitor. By locking the gamer in via the monitor, NVIDIA hopes to secure its market share for longer.

The rapid rise of mining and the co-incidental suitability of AMD’s GPU products for the task have derailed their strategy in the gaming race. PC gamers, whom either cannot find or cannot afford, the R9 are diverted to the Geforce and AMD is left with a hugely invested market strategy gone wrong. Shareholders have to be calmed and informed, and somehow AMD must find a way to turn this setback into an opportunity.

Will they opt to rejoin the gaming race, having fallen behind a lap? Or will they choose to change their game and get in the mining rink with ASICs?

Given the daily escalation of mining difficulty, time is of the essence, and AMD will have to decide quickly in which pool to seek it’s fortunes.

My toughs: Heheh... This is cool . We bought all AMD Radeons

[MICRO]

Central Bank of Jordan Blocks Financial Companies from Bitcoin
Jon Southurst (@southtopia) | Published on February 23, 2014 at 17:50 GMT | Asia, News, Regulation

It was the Central Bank of Jordan’s (CBJ) turn to issue a digital currency warning this week, advising the public of the risks associated with the use of the financial tools, and blocking financial companies from engaging in bitcoin business.

“Recently, a global phenomenon of trading a virtual currency called bitcoin became active around the world,” the bank noted, adding:

“CBJ seeks to protect citizens and the investors, by warning them that virtual currencies are not legal tender and there is no obligation on any central bank in the world or any government to exchange its value for real money issued by them nor backed by underlying international commodities or gold.”

The Bank’s executive director of its payment services department, Maha Bahu, told The Jordan Times that the Kingdom’s banks, financial companies, payment processors and currency exchangers had also received a circular “prohibiting them from dealing with virtual currencies, particularly in bitcoins”.

She said the CBJ had been “following the issue of bitcoin very closely over the past two months”. Another official source told the paper that some people in Jordan and around the region were already trading digital currencies “using phoney names”.

Locals undeterred

A member of the Jordan Bitcoin Group told CoinDesk they were not too discouraged by the announcement, and would continue to advocate for bitcoin in the local media:

“The warning is unfortunate, but it isn’t stopping small businesses and merchants from accepting bitcoin. This Saturday, a cafe started accepting bitcoin, and is already attracting new customers.”

The CBJ’s statement is the latest in a string of similar decrees to come out of central banking authorities since the end of last year, and the third we’ve seen from the Middle East after the nearby central banks of Lebanon and Israel issued warnings on 19th December and 19th February, respectively.

Central banks and bitcoin

The central bank statements, which have ranged in tone from advisory to graver warnings of illegal activity and even bans, have all included the common themes that bitcoin and others are not officially regarded as currencies, cannot be guaranteed by central banks and may suffer dramatic price fluctuations.

However, bitcoin and digital currency news has been scarce from the Middle East, so the overall affect of the announcement is perhaps unclear.

Other than the bank warnings, the only other story to emerge recently was Dubai’s Pizza Guys starting to accept bitcoin just a few days ago.

My toughs: And then some bad news :/

[MICRO]

CCN Week in Review: Mt. Gox, Malware, Bitcoin ATMs, and More
Neil Sardesai  23/02/2014  Posted 5 hours ago



This week on CCN, we learned about Mt. Gox’s continuing woes with hints at recovery, a nasty trojan targeting cryptocurrency users, the first Bitcoin ATMs in the United States, (which our own Caleb Chen tested out!), and more. Here are some of our top stories this week in case you missed them.

Mt. Gox Recovery(?)


Just three days ago, the price of Bitcoin on Mt. Gox fell below $150, due to Mt. Gox suspending all Bitcoin withdrawals. This affected the value of BTC on other exchanges as well, with it being around $550 most of the week. However, there are rumours going around that Gox is planning to resume withdrawals soon, which has caused a recent price surge.

Bitcoin Malware


There’s been a recent increase in malware targeting Bitcoin users. Last week, a trojan called CoinThief targeted Mac users, with one redditor losing 20 BTC ($12,654 at the time of this post). This week, an application called CryptocoinTrader targeted PC users and used screen sharing software to broadcast infected computers’ screens to a location in Russia. Malware targeting Bitcoin users is particularly dangerous since it can result in the loss of thousands of dollars worth of BTC, which is why it’s a good idea to keep most of your Bitcoins in cold storage and only a small fraction for spending on a hot wallet.

First U.S. Bitcoin ATMs


This week, the first American Bitcoin ATMs arrived in Albuquerque, Boston, Austin, and Seattle. One of our writers, Caleb Chen, sold Bitcoin to an ATM in Austin. He reported that “Selling Bitcoin to a Robocoin ATM is a much longer process than buying Bitcoin.” You can read about the entire experience here.

Dogecoin Forks Up


Six days ago, the Dogecoin blockchain forked, resulting in two competing blockchains. This is similar to the Bitcoin fork of March 11th, 2013, which could have been catastrophic, but instead resulted in little to no damage. As such, the important thing is to not panic and make sure your Dogecoin client is updated to version 1.5+. To make sure you’re on the correct blockchain, follow these steps from reddit user “42points”

Go to your newly updated, synced dogecoin wallet and open it. Click on Help>>Debug
Now click the console tab and type getblockhash 104679 (“Block number out of range. (code -1)” means you need to wait for your wallet to sync)
If you see 35eb87ae90d44b98898fec8c39577b76cb1eb08e1261cfc10706c8ce9a1d01cf you are on the correct chain and the update is complete
If you see 5a01ea5380f14ec1571523e36b2f3e91747749be9ed216607fc49038a55d15b2 you are on the wrong chain please see [the rest of this post].

Italy’s 20% Tax on All Wire Transfers


The Italian government has decided to impose a huge 20% tax on all inbound wire transfers. Payment systems such as PayPal and Western Union will be affected. However, Bitcoin remains unaffected, which could compel Italian citizens to switch to Bitcoin to conduct business without facing such steep taxes.

That concludes this Week in Review, where we post our top stories of the week every Sunday.

My Toughs: This is great week review from http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/ . I think i will be implementing this. I will be posting it at the end of evry week. So u guys can get news for whole week in short.

[MICRO]

Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles Resigns from Bitcoin Foundation Board
Jon Southurst (@southtopia) | Published on February 24, 2014 at 04:14 GMT | Bitcoin Foundation, Companies, Exchanges, Mt. Gox, News

Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles has resigned from his position as a board member with the Bitcoin Foundation.

The Foundation posted this announcement on its blog today at 3:30AM GMT:

“Effective immediately, Mark Karpeles has submitted his resignation from the board of directors. We are grateful for his early and valuable contributions as a founding member in launching the Bitcoin Foundation.”

“As CEO of MtGox Co. Ltd. (Japan), he held one of the three elected industry member seats. Further details, including election procedures, will be forthcoming.”

No updates, tweets gone

There has still been no notice since 20th February as to when and if Mt. Gox will resume bitcoin withdrawals for its users. While there were reports of tests and customers receiving withdrawals over the weekend, the company had not made any formal announcement on the issue at the time of writing.

In a move that may unsettle users, Mt. Gox has also deleted all posts from its official Twitter feed.

The price of bitcoin on Mt. Gox also rose from its sub-$100 level on Friday to more than $300 by the end of Sunday. It fell from around $250 to $220 in the hours after the announcement was posted.

Membership issues

Mt. Gox is also one of only two Bitcoin Foundation Gold Members, the second-highest tier of membership (Circle is the other Gold Member and BitcoinStore is a Platinum Member). Despite resigning from the board, Karpeles remains a Founding Member of the Foundation and Mt. Gox’s industry membership is still valid. There have been no formal requests to remove these memberships.

There had been some hand-wringing at the Foundation and its online forums over what sort of action, if any, it should take against Karpeles and Mt. Gox, and there was also a petition at Change.org to remove Karpeles from his Board position.

Other senior Foundation members defended him as a Founding Member and Mt. Gox for its support of bitcoin over the years, saying neither should be removed forcibly but that Karpeles could always resign for personal reasons if he felt it necessary.

Still functioning

Neither Mt. Gox nor its management have been formally accused of any criminal activity, staff continue to work at the office daily and the company claims to be working hard to fix its technical problems.

Both have, however, come under strong criticism from several angles recently first for suspending withdrawals, then for damaging bitcoin’s public image by blaming a long-known transaction malleability issue in the bitcoin protocol for the problem.

There has also been a general lack of communication with customers – many of whom have large sums of money locked in the exchange – and the value of bitcoin on other exchanges has fallen from over $930 on 11th January to less than $600 since Gox announced its “temporary pause” on 7th February.

Mt. Gox has long had issues with withdrawals for US-resident customers, a problem that was often blamed on banking issues and account seizures by US authorities.

This is the second time in recent months that a senior Bitcoin Foundation member and Board Member has resigned from the position under a cloud. BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem, who was the Board’s vice chairman, also resigned in late January after his arrest over allegations of money laundering.

CoinDesk is monitoring this developing story, and will post updates as they become known.

[MICRO]

All Mt. Gox Twitter Posts Removed
Jon Southurst (@southtopia) | Published on February 24, 2014 at 07:30 GMT | Companies, Exchanges, Mt. Gox

In a move sure to unsettle its waiting customers, Mt. Gox has removed all posts from its official Twitter feed. Readers started noticing the missing tweets just a short time after CEO Mark Karpeles resigned his seat on the Bitcoin Foundation’s Board of Directors.

The Twitter account has over 27,800 followers, making it one of the most followed in the bitcoin universe. According to Twittercounter, that total had increased from around 22,000 at the beginning of January. Although all past posts have been deleted, the account itself still exists.

Gox_Twitter


Like the company itself, Mt. Gox’s Twitter feed was somewhat reluctant to disseminate useful information or engage in two-way communication. Many user support queries received automated responses (usually beginning with “Dear Customer”) and sometimes weeks later. It has been silent throughout the company’s recent issues with bitcoin withdrawals.

There have not been any official updates on Mt. Gox’s support page or News section since 20th February, making customers increasingly nervous about the fate of their bitcoin wealth there. Mt. Gox bitcoins, which are still being actively traded, fell from around $300 at the start of 24th February (Japan time) to a low of $155 in the afternoon.

Motivation

With speculation already rampant that Mt. Gox is either insolvent or about to close its doors without reaching an acceptable solution, widespread skepticism met the deletions on forums like Reddit.

Some wondered if the company was preparing to rebrand itself in an attempt to regain trust, while others suggested removing public messages was for a small degree of legal protection in case customers decided to take action beyond office protests. A straw poll on the bitcointalk forum had 43% declaring Gox “dead in the water” and 23% expecting it to solve its problems and survive, with a minority of others expecting a major investor to step in and take over the company.

The notoriously secretive exchange may also just be following its long held pattern of falling silent in a crisis, due to legal concerns or what it regards as office security issues. It also announced it would be moving offices last week in response to recent events, without being clear as to why such action was necessary .

Until Mt. Gox makes another formal announcement or takes some other kind of definite action, however, all speculation must remain just that.