Lyn Ulbricht: Ross’s Latest Appeal About “Constitutional Protections and Freedoms for Us All” In May of 2015, Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his role in operating the dark web site Silk Road. Exactly two years later, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld his conviction and sentencing. Now in a landmark request, Ulbricht has appealed to the the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) regarding the Second Circuit’s decision. A petition for a writ of certiorari has been submitted seeking a hearing for the overturn of the decision upheld this year by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Ross William Ulbricht respectfully petitions for a writ of certiorari to review the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in this case. A writ of certiorari is a demand placed upon the lower court that upheld Ulbricht’s conviction and sentence to turn over its records so that the Supreme Court may review them and determine whether further action is needed. The nine-member Supreme Court, which serves as the nation’s final arbiter in legal matters, is very selective in the cases it hears, often pursuing those with national significance in order to establish precedence or to clarify contradictions in existing decisions. Four of the justices must vote to accept a case in order for it to be heard. The SCOTUS has a low reversal rate in Second Circuit Court rulings. Thus, even if the case is ultimately heard, there’s no guarantee that Ulbricht will receive relief or be vindicated. Kannon K. Shanmugam is the counsel of record managing the appeal. Widely regarded as one of the top appellate attorneys in the U.S., Shanmugam was a former law clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia and has argued 21 cases before the Supreme Court. Ulbricht’s court request highlights two important constitutional law questions. The first involves the Second Circuit codification of the government’s warrantless collection of Ulbricht’s internet traffic information. This case would afford the SCOTUS an ideal opportunity to address the Carpenter v. United States warrantless search case doctrine and how it may apply to Ulbricht’s case. Second, the Second Circuit upheld the court’s original decision to withhold information regarding corruption investigations into two agents from the jury. This decision impacted the sentencing guidelines — a key element in the court imposing a life sentence on Ulbricht. Several justices have previously questioned whether this method of judicial fact-finding runs afoul of the Sixth Amendment. Reached by phone from Colorado, where she now resides and where Ulbricht is imprisoned, Ulbricht’s mother, Lyn Ulbricht, said, “We are battling for Ross, love Ross and feel that he doesn’t belong in prison, let alone a maximum-security facility. He’s a nonviolent, wonderful person that never meant any harm to anyone.” She asserts that the U.S. government’s aggressive stance involving the drug war and nonviolent crimes has become quite alarming and believes that if the Supreme Court accepts her son’s case, it will have far-reaching implications for constitutional protections of all citizens. Lyn Ulbricht says that she’s grateful for the massive outpouring of support on Twitter in response to this Supreme Court filing. “We’ve received lots of support from everyday people who know that this is not about drugs but about a much bigger-picture issue.” She hopes that this case will shine a light on the unconstitutional encroachment of our government and the media sensationalism that supports it. “I’m not going to give up, and our family is not going to give up. This is about important constitutional protections and freedoms for us all. So we will continue to talk about Ross and our rights as American citizens.” The post Lyn Ulbricht: Ross’s Latest Appeal About “Constitutional Protections and Freedoms for Us All” appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/lyn-ulbricht-rosss-latest-appeal-about-constitutional-protections-and-freedoms-us-all/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/rossappeal.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Op Ed: The Blockchain Education Network $100,000 Challenge Blockchain technology, as an overarching industry, has developed leaps and bounds from its geeky, white, cypher-punk roots of yore. (“Yore” being 2015, as it was only a couple years ago that I was a total outlier for simply being a moderate liberal.) When I first entered this space, in earnest, at the end of 2013, I realized that the lack of diversity in “Bitcoin” (as this industry was referred) was entirely untenable if we wanted a true crypto-economy to emerge. What good, I asked myself, is decentralized money, if only a handful of predominately young-to-middle aged male, Western libertarians used it? Maybe good for dark market e-commerce, but that was about it. At least, that was my thesis when I helped found the Blockchain Education Network, BEN, (then dubbed the “College Cryptocurrency Network” or CCN) at the start of 2014. What began as a hodgepodge of “Bitcoin clubs” at a few universities in the United States, within months transformed into a global educational initiative at over one hundred high schools and universities in 20+ countries, on every habitable continent. Different clubs had different focuses beyond just education, from academic research and political advocacy, to entrepreneurship and trading. By the end of the 2014 spring semester, however, we had students from Cambridge (who gave out $100 in BTC to every single undergrad at MIT) to Sierra Leone (where we attempted to help curb the Ebola outbreak with bitcoin remittances). It was a wild ride, and, at a point when much of the world forgot about Bitcoin and nobody was focused on education, we brought young people into the industry in droves and gave them the tools to succeed… and BEN continues to do so, to this day. (Disclaimer: I stepped down as executive director a couple of years ago but remain chairman of the board.) Students who have been a part of BEN have been on the founding teams of Augur (Joey Krug and I met through the nonprofit), Bolt, Coinlist, IOTA, QTUM, and many more. Our members have gone on to work in politics, advocacy and education, and for just about every major blockchain company. BEN hackathons have spawned countless startups and brilliant new ideas. Free tickets we have provided to conferences and events have inspired hundreds of young people to enter this industry full time. As the founder of this organization, however, I have failed to serve it nearly as much as it has served me. After dropping out of school and founding Augur, I was too inexperienced an entrepreneur to balance my responsibilities at this nonprofit and my new startup. It has only been with the incredible work of the students and others who have selflessly volunteered their time to this organization that BEN has been allowed to continue flourishing — I take zero responsibility for its continued success. I would name names but there are too many amazing individuals to count — many of whom I have never even interacted with — as we designed the organization in the same decentralized fashion as Bitcoin. Without diminishing the extraordinary contributions of everyone who has been involved, the two executive directors who succeeded me, Dean Masley and then Jinglan Wang, must be mentioned. They took on a thankless job with zero salary and helped keep this organization thriving on a shoestring budget. Their commitment reverberated across the nonprofit. Moving forward, however, as this technology matures, so must the organizations that foster its adoption. Despite the remarkable work of the Blockchain Education Network’s volunteers, the fact of the matter is that we need some paid staff to help organize students, events, conferences and media. For an organization that has done so much, it’s fairly mind-blowing how little press it has received (my fault again). The organization needs resources to pay for administrative tools, conferences, resource development and curation, as well as student lodging and transportation to events. We want to make sure any young person, regardless of their socioeconomic background, has an opportunity to gain exposure to this revolutionary industry. Nobody should be left behind as this technology accelerates. Thus, I have made a $10,000.00 (USD, in ETH) donation to the Blockchain Education Network. Furthermore, I will match all other donations made over the next four days (through December 31, 2017), up to $100,000.00. The Blockchain Education Network is a federally tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization and is the best way to offset some of your mega crypto-gains this year! In true crypto fashion, give less to the government and more to the industry. The nonprofit accepts donations in dollars and crypto. Just send me your proof of donation on Twitter (@Disruptepreneur) or, preferably, email (Jeremy@blockchainedu.org), and I will match your contribution on the 31st. (I am currently in East Asia, so will be able to compensate for virtually all time zones.) Donation addresses may be found here Here is my initial $10k (ETH) donation: If you’re a student or academic looking to get involved — go to www.blockchainedu.org and join our Slack! If you’re a company or organization and would like to partner with BEN — please do not hesitate to contact me about sponsorship opportunities for 2018. I can be reached at Jeremy@blockchainedu.org. When I first started BEN, I coined the term #GenerationBlockchain. As this industry matures, and more and more young people begin to think about opportunities in this space, it’s incredibly important that we foster a community that enables them to connect with liked-minded students. We have the potential to create a generation of youth who think about blockchains as intuitively as Generation Z approaches email or social media. I believe this is how we lay the foundation for a true crypto-economy. PS. I am actively seeking some fresh faces on our board of directors — so any super-high caliber references would be greatly appreciated. This is a guest post by Jeremy Gardner. Views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Media Inc or Bitcoin Magazine, nor does this article represent an endorsement. The post Op Ed: The Blockchain Education Network $100,000 Challenge appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-blockchain-education-network-100000-challenge/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/BEN_Fund_Xr8DsCK.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Fedcoin Could Be Coming Soon, But Would It Really Challenge Bitcoin? The idea of “Fedcoin,” a cryptocurrency sponsored by the U.S. government and managed by the Federal Reserve, has been around for quite some time. “Imagine that the Fed, as the core developer, makes available an open-source Bitcoin-like protocol (suitably modified) called Fedcoin,” a Federal Reserve VP speculated already in 2015. The idea gained traction also in Europe in connection with the financial crisis in Greece, and was notably discussed in a “Eurocoin” context by former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis. Earlier this year, Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said he believes “very strongly” that the U.S. could and should move to a digital currency and get rid of physical currency. While Stiglitz is persuaded that “the main use of bitcoin has been to circumvent tax authorities and regulation,” he appeared to be in favor of digital currency technology for government. “The technology underlying bitcoin could fundamentally change the way we think of money,” said Campbell R. Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, in the Washington Post. “It is only a matter of time before paper money is phased out.” Phasing out physical cash — the reserve of drug dealers and black marketers — would be one of the main advantages of a national cryptocurrency, according to Harvey, since it would make it far more difficult for criminals to hide and launder money if all transactions could be recorded on the government’s blockchain. The potential for privacy isn’t considered a desirable feature for state-owned cryptocurrencies. On the contrary, as Harvey argues, the introduction of digital currencies would be partly motivated by the desire to eliminate the anonymity of cash. On the other hand, even in a future Fedcoin-like, all-electronic economy, it’s easy to predict that there would be a strong black economy on the side, powered by privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, ether, Monero and other emerging alternatives able to offer stronger privacy. “Despite the negative press about bitcoin being used for illegal transactions, bitcoin is not anonymous, and criminals who use it often do not understand that their transactions are being recorded,” notes Harvey. In fact, while a Bitcoin address isn’t explicitly associated with its owner, blockchain network analysis can often de-anonymize Bitcoin users. To support law enforcement, companies like Chainalysis and Elliptic offer sophisticated blockchain network analysis tools and services to trace Bitcoin transactions back to their participants and de-anonymize users. In a recent presentation, Harvey defined Fedcoin as “a digital USD currency where the complete history of all transactions is visible to the Fed via a Fed blockchain.” That blockchain technology, initially thought of as a libertarian means to escape government control, could become a killer app for governments to have complete control over the citizens, and enforce compliance and tax collection, seems surreal to say the least. Indeed, as Saifedean Ammous, an economics professor at the Lebanese American University, told Bitcoin Magazine, “The importance of Bitcoin is that it makes monetary policy and payment settlement according to predetermined software, free of third-party control. This defeats the point of having a central bank, and is anathema to central banks’ mission, to control monetary policy and supervise money flows.” In the presentation, Harvey cited economist Kenneth Rogoff’s 2016 book “The Curse of Cash,” which proposes to gradually phase out cash, eventually leaving only small notes and coins in circulation, and move to electronic money, perhaps “a government-run version of the virtual currency Bitcoin.” While Rogoff is not persuaded that the “potentially disruptive” technology of today’s cryptocurrencies is sufficiently mature, he thinks a next-generation “Bitcoin 3.0” could be a precursor to a government-controlled digital currency. “If the private sector comes up with a much better way of doing things, the government will eventually adapt and regulate as necessary to eventually win out,” says Rogoff. Ammous disagrees with this sort of argument. “The only thing central banks can do with Bitcoin is accumulate it as a monetary reserve asset. At some point, central banks around the world will start asking themselves if they might be better off holding Bitcoin, with its apolitical monetary policy, than other countries’ national currencies.” Central banks have as much to learn from Bitcoin’s operation as horses have to learn from car engines. It’s a technology meant to displace central control of money. “The Fedcoin idea was presented by David Andolfatto, Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, at the first P2PFISY workshop that I organized at the Bundesbank in Frankfurt, 2015,” Paolo Tasca, executive director of the University College London Centre for Blockchain Technologies, told Bitcoin Magazine. “The idea of dispensing with cash in favor of alternative, more efficient means of payments is not new. Pre-1900 utopian thinkers devoted a lot of effort to finding a way to allow people to get rid of what Robert Owen called the ‘insane money-mystery.’ In more recent years, economists have also begun to study the implications of living in cashless societies, especially referring to the role of central banks and to the conduct of monetary policy.” Other governments and central banks are considering their own versions of Fedcoin. Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, is considering whether the country should introduce a purely digital form of government-backed money, perhaps using distributed ledger technology (DLT). The proposed e-krona would be a digital complement to cash guaranteed by the state, and work as a means of payment, unit of account and store of value. It’s worth noting that usage of cash in Sweden is declining, and there are indications that the country could go entirely cashless in five years. The Riksbank isn’t the only central bank to consider issuing its own digital currency. The central banks of Singapore, Papua New Guinea, Canada and others are considering similar moves. A recent research paper issued by the Bank of Canada, which considers a possible Bitcoin standard similar to the gold standard, is especially interesting. A discussion paper published by the Bank of Finland, which describes Bitcoin as a revolutionary, marvelous economic system, could indicate that the bank is considering with interest the possibility to someday launch its own digital currency. Even China’s central bank is cautiously testing a digital currency. “Other central banks (Bank of England, Bank of Canada and European Central Bank, among others) are studying the idea of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) as a non-ordinary monetary tool that could improve the central banks’ ability to stabilize inflation and the business cycle, and as a new payment channel that could permit tracing the network of payments and record the payment history of each individual,” added Tasca. Another reason for governments to like the idea of a national cryptocurrency, according to both Harvey and Rogoff, is the possibility to strengthen the power of monetary policy to help manage the economy, for example by making it easier to impose negative interest rates. Harvey notes that, were the Federal Reserve to adopt its own cryptocurrency someday, it will become a major (and far less volatile) competitor to bitcoin and other digital currencies. “In fact, it’s not clear whether [F]edcoin would want that competition, and the Fed is in a position to impose a regulatory environment that tilts the playing field,” warns Harvey. “So watch out, bitcoin.” The post Fedcoin Could Be Coming Soon, But Would It Really Challenge Bitcoin? appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/fedcoin-could-be-coming-soon-would-it-really-challenge-bitcoin/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/Fedcoin.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Bitcoin Price Analysis: Expect Some Lower Lows Before the Next Bounce Two days ago, I outlined a potential BTC-USD price breakdown due the broken hypodermic trendline. Since then, the price has dropped nearly $7,000 and is showing signs of further downward continuation. Let’s take a look at the chart from the last BTC-USD market analysis: Figure 1: BTC-USD, 4-Hour Candles, Trend Prior to Breakdown As you can see, the price was holding on by a thread near the red, hypodermic trendline. Once it managed to break this trend, the price immediately and aggressively dropped. Thus, the market signaled the end of the current parabolic breakout. Currently, it is finding support on the parabolic curve; but on the lower timescales, it shows signs it might take one last move downward before a proper bounce occurs. Since the hypodermic trend occurred once the market broke the linear trend, there is likely going to be very strong support there: Figure 2: BTCU-SD, 4-Hour Candles, Hypodermic Breakdown In the event that BTC-USD sees new lows, we can expect solid support in the upper $9900s to low $10,000s. From there we will likely see a bounce leading to a consolidation period, where the market will ultimately decide if it wants to resume the downtrend or break upwards. Given the fact that we broke out of a distribution trading range, it is likely that we will resume this down trend after any potential consolidation. Distribution is the top of the market cycle and leads to a markdown in price once the trading range is broken. However, this is all up in the air right now and we will still have to see how bitcoin handles the next phase of consolidation. For now, I don’t anticipate any radical lows ranging beyond the linear trend support shown above. At this point, it doesn’t appear we have reached a selling climax. Although the selling has been intense, there is nothing terribly notable on the macro view of last nights aggressive moves: Figure 3: BTC-USD, 12-Hour Candles, Macro Volume There was a lot of volume during last night’s moves, but there wasn’t a selling climax that would notably mark what we would expect from such a fantastic drop in price. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but I’m anticipating lower lows in the coming days and weeks. Summary: Bitcoin broke down out of its hypodermic trend. It is currently finding support on its macro parabolic trend. Another shove downward is likely, but I believe it will lead to a bounce to a medium-term consolidation period. Trading and investing in digital assets like bitcoin and ether is highly speculative and comes with many risks. This analysis is for informational purposes and should not be considered investment advice. Statements and financial information on Bitcoin Magazine and BTC Media related sites do not necessarily reflect the opinion of BTC Media and should not be construed as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell or hold. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. The post Bitcoin Price Analysis: Expect Some Lower Lows Before the Next Bounce appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-price-analysis-expect-some-lower-lows-next-bounce/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/BitcoinPrice3.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Tim Swanson: “Enterprise Blockchain is in Trough of Disillusionment” There are few people who have worked in the blockchain technology space for so long and maintained such a seemingly disinterested and skeptical perspective on the emerging technology as Tim Swanson. Through numerous books and a blog, Tim has shown a knack for going out of his way to do deep market research within the blockchain space. This week on Let’s Talk Bitcoin, Tim Swanson, Director of Research at Post Oak Labs, talked with Epicenter’s Brian Fabian Crain and Sebastien Couture. His most notable work within the space has happened as Director of Market Research at R3, the first blockchain enterprise consortium for the financial services industry. During his time at R3, Tim assessed several hundred entities — companies, startups and universities — working on some type of blockchain initiative. His experience gave a full range of good, bad and ugly business operations and blockchain propositions that existed in the early stages of this industry. Whether you agree with his stoic perspective or not, it may be a good remedy for the mania that has resulted from Bitcoin’s phenomenal price increase this year. As new investors flood in the crypto community and more and more people begin talking about blockchain technology, it’s never a bad idea to be reminded of how the industry has developed. “Historically, we’ve seen a lot of manias happen in tech: social media, solar panels, AR, VR, etc. I don’t see the benefit in becoming a fanboy in anything at this early, early stage.” On the current state for the enterprise blockchain market Swanson proposed that there has been a significant shift of attention in 2017 from enterprise blockchain to Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), due in large part to the amount of money that has been raised this way. Referencing the Gartner Hype cycle, Swanson believes blockchain enterprise adoption is currently in the “trough of disillusionment.” This stage comes after the initial peak of expectations where interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. This is also where many producers of the technology either give up or receive continued investment for improving the products to the satisfaction of early adopters. “The problem as a whole for the enterprise blockchain space is that it hasn’t managed any of the expectations it initially set out to accomplish. In the beginning, there were brash claims like putting the entire United States equities market on a blockchain in less than a year. Over time, it became clear that something like that was not possible. Because of the unmanaged expectations coupled with the retail enthusiasm coming from the consumer side seeing how blockchain could help them, where in reality, enterprise is a long-term cycle and build-out, many people lost interest once they realized they could make money much faster through ICOs.” Swanson listed a number of startups working on the enterprise blockchain side in New York, London and the west coast, including Digital Asset, ConsenSys Enterprise, Cobalt DL and Ripple, among others, as well as Clearmatics and R3, both of which Swanson still advises. “If you look at funding for those companies — as an aggregate they’ve raised maybe $400-450 million dollars. For comparison — and it’s not an accurate comparison — ICOs in the month of June raised over $600 million dollars. It was a shift in enthusiasm from people who wanted to get very rich, very quickly. The fact of the matter, even for ICOs, is that you can’t bypass the requirement-gathering necessary to build a platform that can work with existing institutions and existing regulatory and industry requirements.” “You can’t just build an aeroplane, convert it into a helicopter then sell it to a bunch of helicopter enthusiasts. Ultimately, somebody will have to build applications and that’s why building an ecosystem and community is so important.” Why Aren’t There Any New Enterprise Blockchain Companies? Swanson attributed the lack of new enterprise blockchain companies to the difficulty new startups face in working against the existing competition within the space. Established companies have a head start in acquiring the essential ingredients for success in the enterprise blockchain space: capital and some kind of partnership with regulators or players of the existing infrastructure. Furthermore, Swanson suggested that most of the obstacles encountered by enterprise blockchain companies could be easily surmounted by larger players: “Large enterprises like Oracle, IBM, Sap, Microsoft have the capacity and budgets to acquire any of the enterprise startups. Oracle alone could acquire all the enterprise startups themselves and not blink much of an eye.” Transitioning from Proof of Concept to the Pilot Stage Swanson stated that one of the most critical obstacles for enterprise blockchain startups to be mindful of are the principles of financial market infrastructure (PFMI). These are a set of standards adopted after the 2008 financial crisis which the international community considers fundamental to strengthening and preserving financial stability. “These principles are intended to prevent a snowball/domino affect where a local problem could potentially take down an entire system,” said Swanson. Due to the nature of these principles and how they interact within existing financial infrastructure, changing legacy infrastructure by integrating a blockchain that does not comply with these principles is far more time consuming and costly. “Within these large corporations, you can’t just turn off legacy infrastructure, then turn on your blockchain version and continue production. Things have to be run in parallel for a while. It takes time and talent.” The future of the blockchain in enterprise is not necessarily tied to more infrastructures, Swanson concluded. “Instead of building out more infrastructure, I am much more interested in seeing applications built on top of existing infrastructure.” Watch the full episode to hear Swanson on busting hype, the recent ICO spike and the rise of cryptocurrencies as a new asset class among other things. 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With Forkgen, Anyone Can Now Create Their Own Bitcoin Fork (Even Us) “Forkcoins,” or “Initial Fork Offerings” — alternative coins that “split off” from Bitcoin — are all the rage right now. The latest trend in the cryptocurrency world was kicked off last summer with the launch of Bitcoin Cash. The Bitcoin offshoot is a top 3 cryptocurrency by market cap according to websites like Coinmarketcap. Perhaps even more importantly, it is now offered by some of the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchanges and wallet providers, including Coinbase, Bitstamp and Blockchain. The second Bitcoin offshoot, Bitcoin Gold, also claimed a top 10 cryptocurrency spot seemingly out of nothing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, a series of new forkcoins has been announced over the past couple of weeks, ranging from Bitcoin Diamond to Lightning Bitcoin to United Bitcoin and many more. Since this week, anyone can easily create their own forkcoin with the click of a few buttons. Forkgen lets users tweak Bitcoin’s parameters and other properties to fork into a unique Bitcoin offshoot by simply filling them in on a user-friendly website. The service is created by a pseudonymous developer who simply goes by the name “One,” who is assisted by Forkgen’s social media intern: “Two.” Two told Bitcoin Magazine that the service intends to democratize the creation of Bitcoin forks. “Even leading developers have shown it is too hard to create forks of the Bitcoin blockchain without making critical errors,” Two said, referring to the recent failed SegWit2x launch. “Forkgen creates a level playing field where anyone can easily create working forks. Then it reduces to a much simpler problem of marketing your new altcoin. More people are good at that part.” Introducing Bitcoin Magazine Cash To test the service, Bitcoin Magazine decided to create our own Initial Fork Offering. Right now, Forkgen lets users pick a name and three-letter-ticker for their forkcoin, as well as a block size limit and a block height for the fork to take place. Additionally, Forkgen users can choose whether they want to implement replay protection to ensure no one accidentally loses their forkcoin. They can also opt for a mining difficulty reset to make new coins easier to mine at first. Forkgen users can also pick the letters and numbers to start the coin addresses and private keys with — and they can decide how much they want to tilt the Bitcoin logo to distinguish it from the original, like Bitcoin Cash did. Given these tools, we designed our forkcoin: “Bitcoin Magazine Cash,” with the ticker “BMG.” We opted for strong replay protection and a difficulty reset, to make the coin as usable as possible. The Bitcoin Magazine Cash protocol will have a block weight limit of 20120501, an ode to Bitcoin Magazine’s launch date (May 2012), which is also five times bigger than Bitcoin’s limit. Addresses will start with a B or an M, and private keys with an i. Finally, the logo will be tilted 45 degrees counterclockwise, for no particular reason. Bitcoin Magazine Cash forked away from Bitcoin at block 500400: a couple of hours before publication of this article. Anyone who held Bitcoin private keys at 12 PM UTC on December 21, 2017, has now been awarded their free BMG. It should be possible to claim these coins with the Bitcoin Magazine Cash software and your Bitcoin private keys — though we don’t actually recommend this (for reasons explained below). As of yet, it unclear whether any exchanges will support the fork, but Two suggests that all of them really must: “Exchanges should be obligated to split and distribute all arbitrary fork coins despite the systems expense and security risk. Who are they to decide what makes one fork more legitimate than any other?” Interactive Performance Art Although the service should work, on its website Forkgen describes itself as “interactive performance art.” A play on Coingen, a now-defunct altcoin generator, Forkgen emphasizes how easy it is to create Bitcoin forks, that — like the thousands of altcoins out there — in the end are of questionable relevance. Where Coingen was created during the first big altcoin boom of 2013 and 2014 that birthed Bitcoin codebase forks such as Dogecoin, Vertcoin and Viacoin, the recent trend of forkcoins is really the same thing, the Forkgen project seems to suggest. Two ardently denied Forkgen is something akin to joke. “This is VERY SERIOUS. Read the FAQ,” he said. “Forkgen is the embodiment of Satoshi’s True Vision where if big blocks are good for scaling then many chains are even better.” Instructions and Disclaimers Binaries for Bitcoin Magazine Cash (BMG) can be downloaded here for Windows, Mac and Linux. However, Bitcoin Magazine cannot in any way guarantee the authenticity of these binaries that were provided by Forkgen — nor does Forkgen. Download and run the software at your own risk; and keep in mind that exposing private keys that hold value to untrusted software is a particularly bad idea. Additionally, keep in mind that Bitcoin Magazine merely created this software as an experiment; we have no intention of actually maintaining it, nor will we support Bitcoin Magazine Cash in any other way. Want to create your own Bitcoin fork? With the coupon code GreatLeaderCraig, Bitcoin Magazine readers get 50% off for the next 6 days. (Make sure to double check that this discount is really subtracted before making the payment; the Forkgen website was having some issues at the time of writing this article.) Finally, Bitcoin Magazine does not endorse using this service: We cannot guarantee the authenticity of Forkgen or its software in any way. The post With Forkgen, Anyone Can Now Create Their Own Bitcoin Fork (Even Us) appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/forkgen-anyone-can-now-create-their-own-bitcoin-fork-even-us/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/BitMag_Cash.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Bitcoin Price Analysis: After Giddy Heights, Bitcoin Sees a Steady Decline in Price In the days leading up to the various bitcoin futures markets opening, bitcoin saw a push to fresh all-time highs near $20,000. However, shortly after reaching these values, the market saw a steady decline in price as demand dwindled and supply began to dominate the market. In the last bitcoin market analysis, we discussed a possible distribution phase for bitcoin and a potential hypodermic breakdown of the strong, parabolic trend the market has seen. Let’s take a look the latest developments: Figure 1: BTC-USD, 1-Hour Candles, Distribution Update One troubling aspect of this current price trend is the high volume leading into all the dips, and the low volume on the price rises. This price action shows both the diminishing demand in the market and the overwhelming supply that is beginning to take dominance in the market. Currently, bitcoin is perched on a potential part of the trading range called “Last Point of Supply” (LPSY): this offers a final opportunity for the large players who have not exited the market to finally exit before an ultimate correction. As discussed in the previous article, there is a strong, aggressive trend called the hypodermic trendline: Figure 2: BTC-USD, 4-Hour Candles, Hypodermic Trendline The hypodermic trendline represents a break outside of the parabolic envelope that dominated the market trend for over three years. The hypodermic trend also represents an aggressive price trend that is fairly difficult to maintain because of the demand required to keep the price aloft. Currently, the price is sitting below this trendline and has rejected its initial test of the trend. At the moment, BTC-USD is testing the support of the trading range (shown in blue) and is systematically going through support tests as the market finds new lows. A breakdown of this hypodermic trend, and a possible breakdown of this trading range, could easily send the market down to test the parabolic curve (shown in black): Figure 3: BTC-USD, 1-Day Candles, Macro Trend There is likely to be very strong support along the parabolic trend that will stifle any potential price drops. As always, it’s important to watch the volume with the price growth or drops to confirm the likely direction of a move. As we test new lows, any volume growth will likely signal a continuation of the downtrend and ultimately have us testing the lower boundaries of the trading range. Summary: Bitcoin is potentially at its Last Point of Supply as it begins to test new lows in its current downtrend. Bitcoin broke below the hypodermic trendline, which usually signals a breakdown in trend. Support will be found along the lower boundary of the trading range and will likely slow down any potential price drops. Trading and investing in digital assets like bitcoin and ether is highly speculative and comes with many risks. This analysis is for informational purposes and should not be considered investment advice. Statements and financial information on Bitcoin Magazine and BTC Media related sites do not necessarily reflect the opinion of BTC Media and should not be construed as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell or hold. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. The post Bitcoin Price Analysis: After Giddy Heights, Bitcoin Sees a Steady Decline in Price appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-price-analysis-after-giddy-heights-bitcoin-sees-steady-decline-price/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/BitcoinPrice3.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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How Bulletproofs Could Make Bitcoin Privacy Less Costly Bulletproofs, presented in a paper titled “Bulletproofs: Short Proofs for Confidential Transactions and More,” describe a new zero-knowledge proof system. The proposal uses on-chain scaling for privacy and suggests a new, faster and more compact way to verify privacy-enhancing Confidential Transactions (CTs). Specifically, Bulletproofs can decrease the size of these verifications for these types of transactions drastically. Furthermore, the authors of the paper — Stanford University’s Applied Cryptography Group, overseen by professor Dan Boneh — have already managed to create a practical implementation for Bulletproofs. This is how it works. Currently, all transaction information — such as wallet addresses and especially the sent amount of bitcoins — are visible on the Bitcoin blockchain. This affects the privacy of all users. If we wish to pay wages via the Bitcoin network, for example, this means that every salary will be visible on the blockchain network. This, in turn, could mean that someone (like your landlord) could look up how much money you’re making to try and increase your rent accordingly. Confidential Transactions are much needed to bring any type of blockchain to a higher level of privacy. Confidential Transactions combine and utilize several cryptographic tricks so that only the sender and the receiver of a transaction are aware of the amount transacted. These cryptographic tricks let users obfuscate the amounts they are transacting while still allowing onlookers to perform math on the obfuscated amounts. Basically, anyone can still check that the sum of sent bitcoins is greater than the sum of received bitcoins. Confidential Transactions are realized with “zero-knowledge proofs.” These proofs are best described as a method for proving to another party that a Confidential Transaction is valid without conveying any information about the Confidential Transaction itself. However, as stated in the Bulletproofs paper: “Current proposals for CT zero-knowledge proofs have either been prohibitively large or required a trusted setup. Neither is desirable.” First of all, if we have to prove multiple range proofs, which is the case for multisignature transactions, the complexity and size will scale in a linear fashion. For example, if the size of a single proof is 2 kB, two proofs are 4 kB, three proofs are 6 kB and so on. Additionally, zero-knowledge proofs typically require a trusted setup: they must be initialized by some trusted authority. However, the security properties of the Bitcoin system don’t apply to that authority because in practice it means that the authority could produce fake “proofs.” These fake proofs could lead to uncontrolled and undetectable inflation. Bulletproofs could solve these problems. According to the paper, “In any distributed system where proofs are transmitted over a network or stored for a long time, short proofs reduce overall cost.” Bulletproofs are claimed to be able to reduce the cryptographic proof significantly: from 8 kB to 734 bytes, though this depends on what the transaction looks like. Moreover, when dealing with multiple proofs, the size increases with just a few percent instead of this linear scaling. And in addition, Bulletproofs do not require a trusted setup. Andrew Poelstra, contributor to the research paper and mathematician at Blockstream, believes that Bulletproofs are very practical: “We have already implemented a first version in the Bitcoin crypto library libsec256k1, which can verify proofs three and a half times as fast as the verifier for the classic rangeproofs. It is a drop-in replacement for classic rangeproofs that does not affect other aspects of the system and is therefore very easy to integrate.” Until now, Confidential Transactions were just a theoretical concept because they were so heavy to implement. With Bulletproofs, the implementation of Confidential Transactions on Bitcoin suddenly becomes more likely. The post How Bulletproofs Could Make Bitcoin Privacy Less Costly appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/how-bulletproofs-could-make-bitcoin-privacy-less-costly/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/bulletproofs.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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After Second Hack This Year, South Korean Exchange Youbit Closes Down South Korean exchange Youbit announced on its website today that it is closing down after a hack early Tuesday, December 19, 2017, that resulted in the loss of 17 percent of its assets. The exchange, previously known as Yapizon, did not indicate how many bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies were stolen or what the total fiat value of the attack amounted to, but it was enough to lead to bankruptcy. This was the second hack the exchange suffered this year. A prior attack in April 2017, resulted in the loss of 3,816 bitcoins, worth around $5 million at the time. Youbit said hackers broke into its hot wallet, the online account used to pay out cryptocurrencies instantly. While hot wallets offer greater convenience, they also put funds at greater risk because they are connected to the internet. The remaining coins were kept offline in a cold wallet, the exchange said, resulting in no additional losses. The exchange indicated that customers could withdraw up to 75 percent of their balances, and the rest would be tallied out after the final settlement. Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), the state agency that responds to cyberattacks, is investigating the incident, as reported in Reuters. KISA has maintained that North Korean hackers were behind the first hack. Chris Doman, threat engineer at software security company AlienVault, told Bitcoin Magazine, he suspects BlueNoroff, a subgroup of North Korea’s cyber crime group Lazarus is responsible for the second Youbit attack. Lazarus is known for the November 2014 hack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, one of the biggest corporate breaches in history. While attacks by Lazarus have mainly been aimed at social disruption, recent reports indicate the group is increasingly going after money. With the value of bitcoin surging to all-time highs, exchanges are becoming a lucrative target. “The first time I saw them target a Bitcoin company was in May this year — the same month they unleashed WannaCry,” Doman said in a statement shared with Bitcoin Magazine. The exchange that Doman was refering to is South Korean Bitcoin exchange Bithumb. Around that same time, WannaCry ransomware attacks were encrypting user’s computers and offering to de-encrypt them in exchange for bitcoin. Analysis of the techniques used in the WannaCry attacks show strong links to Lazarus. Doman added, “They’ve also used related malware to opportunistically mine Monero coins on compromised servers. Clearly they have a large interest in cryptocurrencies as an easy method for economic gain, as well as an opportunity to economically weaken their enemies.” Although Youbit is one of the smaller bitcoin exchanges, the hack underscores the risk involved in leaving funds on an exchange, where control of those funds is handed over to a third party and is only as safe as whatever security measures that exchange chooses to use. Throughout the history of Bitcoin, hacks have amounted to painful losses. When bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox began liquidation proceedings in April 2014, the company announced that approximately 850,000 bitcoins were missing, an amount valued at more than $450 million at the time. In August 2016, the Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex announced hackers stole approximately 120,000 BTC, worth $72 million at the time. The post After Second Hack This Year, South Korean Exchange Youbit Closes Down appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/after-second-hack-year-south-korean-exchange-youbit-closes-down/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/youbit_copy.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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This Lightning Network Designer Is Re-Inventing Bitcoin Smart Contracts Bitcoin is usually not considered the blockchain best suited for self-executing conditional payments, better known as smart contracts. While it does support basic programmability to enable features like time locks and multi-signature (multisig) schemes, competing projects like Ethereum, Ethereum Classic or Qtum are often expected to better support more advanced applications. However, a new wave of research is increasingly questioning this assumption. For example, Scriptless Scripts, a project spearheaded by Blockstream mathematician Andrew Poelstra, cleverly utilizes the magic of cryptography to move smart contracts off-chain, while leveraging Bitcoin’s security, but without requiring extensive smart-contract support on the Bitcoin protocol itself. Along similar conceptual lines, Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs) could deploy another class of smart contracts on top of Bitcoin. A project by one of the authors of the original Lightning Network white paper, Tadge Dryja, and recently presented at Scaling Bitcoin Stanford, DLCs could realize blockchain-enforced insurance companies, futures contracts, dollar-pegged coins and much more. Here’s how that works. Bets Many types of smart contracts essentially boil down to “bets.” Let’s say, for example, that someone wants to insure himself against being unable to travel due to a potential pilot strike. That person can then “bet” there will be a strike. If there is no strike, the “bet” is lost as if it were an insurance down payment. If there is a strike, on the other hand, the “bet” is won, like an insurance payout. As a more interesting example perhaps, people can also bet on the price of BTC relative to the US dollar: a futures market. If someone bets that the BTC price will go down, and the BTC price does go down, he “wins” more BTC; if the BTC price goes up, he “loses” some BTC. Interestingly, this can be structured to ensure that the person entering into these “bets” is practically guaranteed to end up with the same USD value in BTC regardless of what happens. This can, in turn, be used to realize a “stablecoin” with fixed USD value on Bitcoin’s blockchain. (It should be noted that there are extreme examples where this doesn’t hold up, like a scenario where Bitcoin fails completely and BTC drops to zero dollars — but, in most cases, it works.) However, while these types of smart contracts are interesting, they cannot be executed based on blockchain-based data alone. A blockchain cannot tell whether pilots are striking, nor what the USD/BTC exchange rate is. This requires data input from outside of the blockchain, and this is where “oracles” come in. Oracles Oracles are essentially trusted sources of information; they provide data that cannot itself be “read” by a blockchain. This data can be inserted into a smart contract, which will then execute based on the oracle’s input. Since the types of smart contracts described above need to rely on such external data sources anyway, it makes sense to leverage the trust in oracles in order to simplify a smart contract. Instead of more complex solutions, oracles can, for example, be “plugged into” a relatively basic multisig scheme. As a simple example, let’s say that next summer Alice and Bob want to bet a bitcoin on the FIFA World Cup final between Argentina and Brazil. Alice thinks Argentina will win; Bob thinks Brazil will. To make this bet blockchain-enforceable, Alice and Bob both send one bitcoin to a multisig address that requires two of three signatures to spend the coins. One of these three keys is held by Alice, another key is held by Bob and the third key is held by the oracle. If Argentina wins, Alice and Bob should both sign a transaction from this address that sends both bitcoins to Alice. Since this requires only two signatures, Alice and Bob’s signatures suffice, and the oracle never comes into play. (Needless to say, if Brazil wins it’s the other way around: Alice and Bob sign a transaction sending both coins to Bob.) A problem arises only when the losing party — Bob — refuses to sign the transaction. It’s in this scenario that the oracle would use its third key to help Alice claim the two bitcoins. Importantly, exactly because this is an option, Bob really has no reason not to sign. (This is even more true if Alice and Bob put up some collateral so Bob gets refunded some of his BTC if he signs.) Ideally, the oracle’s signature should hardly ever be needed at all; Alice and Bob can complete the bet on their own. Still, the basic multisig and oracle solution has its weaknesses. For example, the oracle would probably have to be involved with setting up the bet; or at least it should be available to act as a sort of judge whenever needed. This means that the oracle could potentially be corrupted, for example, if Bob offers the oracle a share of the coins if they collude to steal both. And Alice and Bob also have no privacy from the oracle: the oracle will know exactly what they are betting on and how much they are betting. Meanwhile, the rest of the world can tell that Alice and Bob used an oracle for their bet (and, therefore, that it was a bet). These are the problems that Discreet Log Contracts could solve. They maintain the benefits of the straightforward multisig and oracle solution — but eliminate most of its weaknesses. Payment Channels As mentioned, Dryja, who is currently working for MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative, is one of the authors of the lightning network white paper. His DLC project is based on a similar concept. A key idea behind the lightning network is that two people can open a payment channel, allowing them to transact with each other. Such a payment channel utilizes Bitcoin’s basic programmability (like time locks and multisig addresses) and combines it with some clever tricks to commit transactions to other transactions, all without broadcasting them to the network unless needed. Over time, as the people in the channel transact with each other, these payment channels are updated with new balances or “channel states.” Either party can then “drop” the latest channel state on the blockchain at any time and claim their balance whenever they want to. And importantly — this is where Bitcoin’s basic programmability is leveraged — both parties can only safely broadcast the latest channel state. If they try to cheat by broadcasting an earlier channel state, their counterparty can actually claim every single coin in the channel. DLCs works similarly. But where a lightning network payment channel only lets the parties involved broadcast the most recent channel state, DLCs limit them to broadcasting only the channel state reflecting the correct outcome of a bet. This is where the oracle comes in — but this time combined with some fancy math tricks. The Oracle Signature As opposed to 2-of-3 multisig schemes where oracles act a bit like judges, oracles in DLCs more closely resemble broadcasters. For our World Cup bet, it would make sense that the oracle is a sports-betting service, a football news website, perhaps the FIFA or another entity that broadcasts the winner anyway and that is reasonably trusted not to lie about it. Let’s say the oracle in this case is a sports-betting service that regularly publishes the score and winner of the World Cup final on their website. To enable a DLC, the same sports-betting service only needs to add a minor additional step. Basically, this “broadcast oracle” has a public key and a private key. (A private key is really just a randomly generated number, while the public key is a seemingly random number derived from that private key.) This public key is published somewhere, most likely on the betting service’s website for anyone to find. The private key is, of course, kept private: This can be used by the oracle to sign a message. (Such a signature, too, is a seemingly random number but is derived from the private key in combination with the message.) The possible outcomes of the bet are known as well: either Argentina wins the World Cup final or Brazil wins. The sports-betting service, therefore, announces that it will broadcast one of two very specific messages: “Argentina won” or “Brazil won.” Now, what’s interesting about public key cryptography is that the sports-betting service’s public key can be used to figure out what a signature of the message — “Argentina won” or “Brazil won” — will mathematically “look like.” (“Look like,” in this case, doesn’t mean that Alice and Bob can produce the signature themselves, but they can calculate certain mathematical properties that it will have.) Because Alice and Bob can calculate what the potential oracle signatures will “look like,” they can use it in their DLC. The Discreet Log Contract First, before the World Cup final, Alice and Bob pay one bitcoin to a “funding transaction.” From this funding transaction, several potential transactions are constructed — but these are not yet broadcast over the network. Here’s where the cryptography gets a bit complex. What the sports-betting service signatures “look like” is cleverly embedded in these several potential transactions, where each potential signature enables a different transaction. (Specifically, and somewhat unconventionally, what the signatures “look like” is used as public keys in key-pairs for the different transactions.) In other words, knowing what the oracle’s potential signatures will “look like,” Alice and Bob can construct their payment channels such that the two different potential signatures can be used to validate two different channel states: one where Alice gets two bitcoins and one where Bob gets them. Then, the actual oracle signature, which is published after the World Cup final is played, is used as private key to validate the winning transaction — and only the winning transaction. If the sports-betting service broadcasts a signature for “Argentina won,” Alice can take this signature, use it as a private key (in combination with her own private key) and claim the two bitcoins from the channel. If the oracle signs a message for “Brazil won,” Bob can. Meanwhile, if either tries to claim the bitcoins without the oracle signature, they will fail, and their counterparty can instead claim both coins. Further, like lightning network payment channels, the outcome of the bet — two bitcoins for Alice if Argentina wins — can now also be broadcast by Alice and Bob as a fairly regular multisig transaction from the funding transaction. And indeed, exactly because Alice can enforce the outcome with the oracle signature anyway, there is little reason for Bob not to cooperate. As a result, the “bet” is fully blockchain-enforced through the sports-betting service’s signature, while this service doesn’t need to do anything for this specific bet; it doesn’t even need to know it ever took place. And, notably, while this bet is relatively simple (either Argentina wins or Brazil wins), in reality DLCs could allow for far more complex scenarios. Exactly because only a fairly regular multisig transaction is broadcasted in the end, it doesn’t really matter if a “bet” has two, 200, or 200,000 potential outcomes. For more details on DLCs, also see Dryja’s presentation at Scaling Bitcoin Stanford. The post This Lightning Network Designer Is Re-Inventing Bitcoin Smart Contracts appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/lightning-network-designer-re-inventing-bitcoin-smart-contracts/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/DiscreetLogs.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Vaultbank Forges New Path to Value Creation There was a time back in 2016 when the price of bitcoin was worth less than $1,000. During that year, a number of digital assets saw a significant rise in value. Few really knew what Bitcoin was, let alone how to make a purchase. Those that did steered clear of cryptocurrencies fearing their volatile nature as well as the complexities of entering into the market. This scenario still prevails, serving as a major barrier in efforts to boost mainstream adoption. Addressing this issue has been a perpetual challenge. One company that believes that they have a viable solution is Vaultbank. With the goal of reducing these barriers while intending to offer a more stable investment, Vaultbank, a global investment firm committed to sound financial investment and technological advancement, is in development on a platform called Vaultbank Exchange. This revolutionary technology hopes to improve the world of cryptocurrency by making investments in security tokens and utility token trading easier, faster and more cost efficient with some of the lowest fees in the market. Austin Trombley, Chief Technology Officer and company visionary, states, “We are excited about the prospect of reducing the fees on platforms like Coinbase by more than 50 percent all the while leveraging an extremely user-friendly interface and offering access to security token investments, which we believe will take up much more significant share of the cryptocurrency market with additional SEC regulations coming.” Vaultbank’s aim is to deliver quarterly dividends through their tokens (VB). VB tokens are backed by secured credit assets overseen by an experienced investment and portfolio management team. Addressing the Market Entry Conundrum Purchasing cryptocurrencies can be a trying process filled with multiple steps, online navigation challenges and long deposit times. Myriad exchanges now fill the crypto space with hundreds of different coins, most of which are unfamiliar to the investor. Through the use of distributed ledger technology, Vaultbank will provide a debit card that allows the investor immediate access to their invested funds. Here blockchain enhances the overall efficiency of portfolio management with the effect of lowering fees common in the investment world. Vaultbank achieves this through a joint venture with U.K. debit card and FX Currency exchange platform Volopa. Volopa allows the end user to trade up to 17 FX Currencies at highly competitive exchange rates, while giving Vaultbank account holders the ability to pay with Ether, Bitcoin and VB tokens. Augmented by artificial intelligence and machine learning from Random Forest Capital, Vaultbank’s team of experienced portfolio managers intends to create attractive yields for its users. The value creation comes from a quant approach to portfolio management, coupled by ensured security and solvency to rival traditional financial institutions. Vaultbank and its token system stand to reduce the complexity in cryptocurrency banking by tackling these five obstacles in the securities distribution market: Inability to use tokens as a fungible form of payment Delayed liquidity in executing a token transaction High transaction costs entry and execution costs (as high as 5 to 7 percent) Volatility, various cryptocurrencies have exhibited 20 percent to 50 percent swings in valuation within days Lack of transparency and integrity tied to­ most cryptocurrencies having no audit, compliance or oversight practice. Vaultbank Token Sale Vaultbank’s token sale, the presale of which is now live and the public on sale which will commence on January 18, 2018, will feature the new Vaultbank Token, which will act as an investment in their entire business and funds. 80 percent of the token sale funds raised will be invested in a secured loan portfolio, as the main fuel early on with quarterly dividends, making it the first asset-backed token to pay dividends in this manner. Vaultbank is clear to note that dividends cannot be guaranteed. Says Trombley: “Vaultbank is different from 99 percent of ICOs that have taken place thus far because we are filing as a Reg D 506c private security. Our tokens are a security because they actually represent equity, although non-voting, in Vaultbank.” When asked about the long-term vision of Vaultbank and where he hopes the company will be in terms of its development in the next 12–18 months, Trombley concludes: “Our goal is to be the leading firm for investment strategy and expected investment liquidity. We believe that value creation is achieved through a quant approach to portfolio management as well as our debit cards and Vaultbank Exchange platform. With an executive team and advisory board with decades of combined experience in managing trillions of dollars for the largest investment institutions around the world, we are confident in the roadmap we have in place to achieve these goals.” Follow the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram. 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Op Ed: Bitcoin’s Scaling Challenge Brings the Battle for Liberation of Cyberspace This year brought a climax in the prolonged Bitcoin block size debate. Heated disputes over scaling that have become toxic in the ecosystem have overshadowed the technology. The cancelation of SegWit2x, the most controversial proposal in this cryptocurrency’s history, averted a potential catastrophe. Innovation moves on and the community is finding some time for reflection. What did this latest crisis teach us? The political battle that came to the forefront in the last several months challenges all to examine a prevailing notion of Bitcoin as apolitical money and can help us explore the deeper vision behind this technology. The trilogy of Wachowski’s science fiction film became a popular meme in the Bitcoin battle on social media. The Matrix is a story of a computer programmer played by Keanu Reeves who is said to become the One who can free people from a machine-controlled system. Neo’s struggle to liberate humanity from oppression seems to have resonated with many Bitcoiners who found a similar passion in the potential of Bitcoin to bring financial sovereignty to the common man in the world of central banks. In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo confronts the man who designed the system. The Architect, who represents scientific reason and logic, tells Neo: “Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision …” To this, Neo responds saying, “Choice. The problem is choice.” Neo’s choice represents an irregularity that disrupts order and eventually threatens the system. This irregularity, in the eyes of the Architect, is a kind of bug that needs to be removed, yet he is unable to do so. Bitcoin is an architecture that contains this anomaly. If we look back at the past nine years of its existence, the development of this network relied on the individual’s choice. In the white paper published in the midst of a financial crisis, the mysterious author put forward a blueprint of a decentralized network and set up its basic design. What created the network was participation of people who, of their own volition, followed the white rabbit. Yet at the same time as the network grew, this uncontrollable anomaly began to bring hostile forces to the network and create fluctuations in equations. Clash of Two Visions From Bitcoin XT to Bitcoin Classic to Bitcoin Unlimited, the proposals to change Bitcoin’s consensus emerged over time, which stirred up disagreements. The crux of the conflict can be found in opposing visions of Bitcoin. One camp views it as a payment system, wanting cheaper, faster on-chain transactions, while the other sees censorship resistance and permissionlessness as its defining feature and value proposition. The friction of these two visions can be metaphorically depicted as a battle between Agent Smith and Neo involving their different ideas of freedom. Agent Smith represents the Adam Smith of the world, advocating a “free market” economy born in the Industrial Revolution. On the other hand, Neo is a symbol of civil liberty in the Digital Age, representing free speech and privacy enabled by asymmetric encryption. The growing schism between two visions of Bitcoin seemed to have reached the point of no return in May with the announcement of the “Bitcoin Scaling Agreement.” SegWit2x, or the New York Agreement, was born in the heat of the scaling dispute. This proposal was put forward by opponents of the Core development team’s proposed protocol upgrade (a way to increase a new capacity without having to change consensus rules, while fixing a long-standing malleability bug). Most signers of the agreement saw SegWit2x as a compromise between Core’s planned SegWit implementation (BIP141) and Bitcoin Unlimited’s threat of a contentious hard fork alternative. They saw it as a way to keep the network together. SegWit2x, a plan to double the block size through a hard fork, was developed in an invite-only meeting in a New York hotel by major actors in the industry. Unlike Bitcoin Cash, which was launched by supporters of a block size increase in response to the SegWit lock-in, SegWit2x lacked the replay protection needed to prevent potential loss of users’ funds through accidental replay spending and replay attacks. Concerns were raised about this proposal, specifically its rushed preparation done in a closed development process. Some perceived it as a dangerous and reckless hard fork, which is not a software upgrade as proponents claim, but an attack on Bitcoin. Beginning of Resistance In the Matrix series, aside from the Architect, who presents himself as the father of the system, there is another crucial character: the Oracle, who is the mother of the system. Morpheus speaks of how the Oracle, who made a prophecy, has been with the common people since the beginning of the resistance. He tells Neo just before he mets the Oracle, “Try not to think of it in terms of right and wrong. She is a guide. She can help you find the path.” In a sense, the creator of Bitcoin was like a prophet who set up a path for a new future for others to find. What is contained in the white paper is a vision that has set everything in motion: a vision that existed from the very beginning. Before the architecture of 1s and 0s, whether numbers were used to calculate profit margins or to program software, there was a vision to guide human action. The rabbit hole that took many of us to the Wonderland of this crypto-world goes much deeper. In a speech in Zurich titled “Call for a Revolutionary Hacker Movement,” Amir Taaki, who was one of the first developers to start working on Bitcoin, described the battle that has long been engaged since the dawn of the internet. He reminded the audience how Bitcoin is a political movement that was built on an earlier struggle. Taaki spoke about another prophet who inspired him to engage in Bitcoin development. His name is Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement, who brought about the idea of free software. This godfather of the GNU/Linux operating system described free software as “the first battle of liberation of cyberspace.” Stallman explained that free software is “controlled by its users, rather than the reverse.” He defined “free” as freedom, libre in French, and not in terms of price. This vision of technology to empower individuals and change the world formed hacker ethics, which inspired a group known as the cypherpunks, an electric mailing list of activists who advocate free speech and privacy with the use of strong cryptography. Amir noted how commercial interests co-opted Stallman’s vision by renaming free software as “open source” and rebranding it with an open-market idea focused on efficiency, profit and growth. Networks of committed individuals, who out of their own free resolution dedicated themselves to shared ideals greater than themselves, were slowly overtaken by business interests and people who were overly driven by self-interests. He then pointed out how the debacle of the block size debate was a hijacking of Bitcoin’s original vision, rooted in these ethics. Resurgence of Free Software Bitcoin is a breakthrough of computer science as free software, which ensures individual users’ rights to control its program. The first essential condition of freedom in the principle of free software that Stallman articulated is “freedom to run the program as you wish.” Stallman explained that if you are not a programmer and don’t know how to program, you can pay someone to do it for you and then, through them, you can exercise your freedom. Bitcoin is a global project of free software, in which changes to the protocol are made through a broad consensus of the network. What maintains the integrity of this collective free software are full nodes run by individual users who enforce Bitcoin consensus rules, often referred to as the economic majority. By running codes of their own choice and using the nodes to receive transactions, users create economic activity. This way, they can support the developers who work on their behalf. The proposed large block size violates this first premise of freedom, for it would increase the cost for individual users to run full nodes, making it impossible for them to use the free-market forces to exercise their own freedom. Thus, this idea for a bigger block size was rejected on technical grounds, with consideration of the security trade-off that centralization brings. A new solution has been put forward by core developers to preserve this essential condition of freedom on the first layer, with specialization to be built into other layers. Responding to the SegWit2x initiative, CEO and co-founder of Prasos, Henry Brade, noted, “We are seeing the removal of #Bitcoin cypherpunk roots and the insertion of an industrial oligopoly to control all Bitcoin development.” Some articulated how the real story behind this scaling drama is all about control and noted how these were efforts partially driven by the desire to remove the influence of Bitcoin Core contributors and lock down development within their own vested interests. Hash Power Supremacy Like Agent Smith, who tried to keep Neo under his control, the world of IOU with laissez-faire economics collides with cypherpunks’ hacker ethics of free and open software. With ICOs and new BIPs filled with empty promises, corporate and Wall Street profiteers disguised as prophets try to infiltrate the cryptosphere. Big business players, like wild cowboys, plunder knowledge in the Bitcoin source code repository that is carefully maintained through rigorous testing and peer review. Under the banner of “open source,” those driven by greed and commercial interests try to copy, modify and create their own versions of this currency and put the whole network under their proprietary control. Here, the industrial infrastructure of power came in full force to resist the ascent of a new Digital Era. Ideology of hash power supremacy was taken up by SegWit2x proponents, who argued that miners can decide or should dictate the future of the Bitcoin protocol. This ideology is based on the belief (perhaps held by some out of lack of knowledge and by others more intentionally) that a blockchain with more hashing power dedicated to it becomes Bitcoin. Some criticized these miners’ attitudes to put themselves above the protocol rules enforced by users. They saw it as a dangerous, slippery slope toward changing all other rules, including the 21 million coin limit. The community’s concern about this seemingly overarching power of miners reached another level last spring when the controversy over Bitmain’s AsicBoost technology emerged. The allegation was made that Chinese hardware maker Bitmain was secretly exploiting a previously known weakness in Bitcoin’s algorithm and engaging in unfair mining practices. If this was true, it was like a malicious malware in software that was released into the network. Monopoly through a patent on mining chip technology can be used as a weapon to disable fair market competition and restrict users’ access to participate in the network fully. #UASF, Proof-of-Hats Consensus While proponents of SegWit2x tried to command economically rational miners and intensify the threat of a hard fork, resistance had emerged. The attempted hashing power takeover was met by Twitter hashtag activism. Around this consensus algorithm, a human network of solidarity was quickly formed, and a spontaneous, self-directing organism emerged within the ecosystem. A seed of this movement was planted when pseudonymous Bitcoin and Litecoin developer Shaolinfry proposed his User Activated Soft Forks (UASF). The vision of UASF is said to be inspired by game theory put forward by the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, namely a concept of the “intolerant minority.” This idea of an activation mechanism enforced by users began to grow when it kindled in the spirit of others. Samson Mow, the CSO of the blockchain technology company Blockstream, set up a bounty to fund the development of a UASF software implementation designed to trigger BIP141. The UASF cap distributed by Mow became a Proof-of-Hat consensus, a torch of freedom that unites those whose hearts beat to keep the original vision of Bitcoin immutable. Linux software engineer Warren Togami reminded Bitcoiners that users are in charge: “Stop begging developers to decide. Users have the real power, and they need to step up their advocacy game. #BIP148.” The previously silenced majority had found an avenue to exercise their own power. #NO2X, the Rise of Hashtag Activism With his gift for social engineering, Mow created Twitter moments. Titled “Bitcoin vs. CorporateBitcoin (corporate takeover),” his “moment” called on users to rise up in this “battle for Bitcoin’s soul.” Dubbed as Bitcoin Independence Day, activation for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 148 (BIP148) was se from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-bitcoins-scaling-challenge-brings-battle-liberation-cyberspace/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/gpscaling.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Meet “Pine,” the Bitcoin Philanthropist Who Set Up the $85 Million Pineapple Fund Yesterday, one post set the Bitcoin subreddit on fire: An anonymous Bitcoiner who goes by the name of “Pine” announced that they are establishing the Pineapple Fund to donate 5,057 BTC, worth about $86 million at today’s exchange rate, to charitable causes. “I’m very happy that I have held on to most of my bitcoins until today,” Pine told Bitcoin Magazine. “Most early adopters of bitcoin actually don’t have much. They’ve sold to pay bills and expenses.” Indeed, last week it was revealed that Bitcoin evangelist Andreas Antonopoulos was one of those who had not been in a position to hold his early coins long enough to reap the rewards. In a subsequent outpouring of appreciation, Bitcoin enthusiasts sent him donations of more than 100 BTC, equivalent to more than $1.7 million. In this same spirit of giving back, Pine is sharing their own newfound wealth. “Sometime around the early days of bitcoin, I saw the promise of decentralized money and decided to mine/buy/trade some magical internet tokens,” states the Pineapple Fund website. “The expectation shattering returns of bitcoin over many years has [led] to an amount far more than I can spend. What do you do when you have more money than you can ever possibly spend? Donating most of it to charity is what I’m doing.” Some charities that are already receiving donations from the Pineapple Fund include Watsi, The Water Project, EFF, MAPS, SENS Research Foundation, charity: water ($1 million each), BitGive ($500,000) and OpenBSD ($50,000). Have you heard?! Yes, it's TRUE! We received an extremely generous donation of $500K from the Pineapple Fund!! HUGE THANKS!! Pineapple Fund has announced the most significant #philanthropic gesture EVER in #bitcoin to donate over 5,000 BTC! from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/meet-pine-bitcoin-philanthropist-who-set-85-million-pineapple-fund/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/pineapple_1ozm7lL.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Garzik Forks UnitedBitcoin Away from “Maximalists” to Support Altcoin Communities A new project called UnitedBitcoin (warning: the site autoplays audio) promises to add smart contract features using the UTXO model, support for the lightning network and SegWit, and eight-megabyte blocks. Headed up by Jeff Garzik, the lead developer behind the failed SegWit2x hard fork, along with Matthew Roszak and SongXiu Hua, this UnitedBitcoin (UB) hard fork will offer replay protection to prevent people from accidentally spending their coins on both the Bitcoin and the UnitedBitcoin blockchains. Garzik told Bitcoin Magazine that “10% of the total worldwide SHA-256 hash power” has moved to the new UB network, with much of the support coming from China and older mining equipment that was no longer profitable due to the escalating difficulty in mining bitcoin. He noted that UB is already supported on the ZB and EXX exchanges. The UB white paper outlines how lost bitcoins have created deflationary pressure that has pushed the price up. Because those bitcoins are out of circulation, the supply is further decreased. One of the issues that UB seeks to address is to find a purpose both for those lost bitcoins and for “inactive” wallets by creating a stable cryptocurrency linked to their addresses. All active Bitcoin addresses will receive the same balance on the UB chain, much like previous forks. The balances of UB on inactive addresses, however, will be confiscated by the UB Foundation and used to “serve the community.” Inactive addresses are defined in the white paper as “addresses without activity since block height #494000 (November 11, 2017) and as a result didn’t automatically receive UBTC during phase 1 of the asset allocation procedure.” UB does not distinguish between an “inactive” address and one which is simply being used by a long-time “hodler.” “There is no difference. An inactive account is an inactive account,” said Garzik. “Like during [the] Ethereum new coin creation, you had to take a proactive step, otherwise you got zero [ether]. This is normal for new token creation — new chain, new ERC20, but different from all other Bitcoin Forks. We are trying to do something new and different.” Anyone with a prior balance of 0.01 BTC in an “inactive” address at the time of the November 11 fork can still get UB tokens, so long as they are willing to take such a “proactive step”: that is, they make at least one transfer to their own Bitcoin address between Block 498,777 and Block 501,878 (December 12, 2017, to 12:00 GMT on January 3, 2018, GMT). Only the original address can make the transfer to itself, and the receiving address must be used as one of the sending (input) addresses. One privacy issue to consider is that in order to “proactively” claim BU tokens, the protocol forces users to reuse their Bitcoin addresses; this action puts privacy at risk and, unless it is done carefully, may link many of the users’ coins together. It's a gold mine for blockchain deanonymization, merging up UTXOs and reusing addresses. Can't help but think such an artificial qualification is deliberate. — Johnathan Corgan (@jmcorgan) December 13, 2017 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js User privacy protection is not the only part of the protocol that is drawing criticism, however. “The code contains a god mode; it’s literally called that,” Blockchain developer Sjors Provoost said to Bitcoin Magazine. He said that it appears as if this “god mode” will create a multisignature address that belongs to a (yet-to-be-defined) UnitedBitcoin Foundation. “Unlike previous airdrops, the initial coin distribution is not determined by a consensus rule,” he added. “This means that even if you were to run the full UB node software (which you should not), you will have no way of knowing for sure how many coins you get. Conversely, if you already had bitcoin, you won’t know how many of ‘your’ coins will be confiscated. You simply have to trust their promise to take and redistribute coins as their marketing promises.” According to Provoost, the new consensus rule allows the owner of this foundation address to spend any UTXO they want. “These confiscations will be included in holy blocks, which can be created during the first 500 blocks after the fork. This is how they implement the redistribution as I just described, but they can do much more.” Furthermore, Provoost is concerned about the quality of the code itself. “Garzik’s previous project SegWit2x tried to keep its changes relative to Core to a bare minimum. Although at the time of the planned fork their code base was about a year behind Bitcoin Core, it didn’t introduce many changes,” he pointed out. “UnitedBitcoin on the other hand has introduced far more changes, making the task of tracking Bitcoin Core far more difficult. It’s not as many changes as Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin Cash, and the problem is somewhat mitigated by them sunsetting the more complicated consensus changes like god mode. However, even the small change in SegWit2x had a widely publicized serious bug in it and there are rumors of more.” What Happens to Those “Reclaimed” Tokens? Garzik has plans to “build a better Tether” by using the UB reserve, funded by coins reclaimed from “inactive” addresses. According to the project, 70 percent of confiscated UB coins will be held as collateral to issue stable tokens pegged to a fiat currency. “The UB reserve can be used as a backing asset for a stable, non-volatile currency,” said Garzik. “This is auditable and transparent and on the blockchain. It will be over-collateralized, 200–300% to maintain the stability even in the face of a volatile price of the reserve.” The remaining 30 percent of the confiscated coins will support another new feature: owners of QTUM, H-shares and ether will receive a share of the remaining redistributed UB. UB is experimenting with a new model: engage multiple communities — ETH, Qtum — rather than following the tired model of rewarding Bitcoin maximalists with a coin they dislike and will just dump on day 1. According to Garzik, the specific claim process for the redistribution of UB has yet to be determined. “The UB board is still being put in place — things are moving very fast — and this will include more specifics on governance and community allocations.” The scheduled timeline of what has been released and what is coming breaks down as follows: December 12, 2017: Fork of Bitcoin to UnitedBitcoin (at block height #498,777) with support for: Increased block size to 8 MB SegWit support Replay Protection Asset Allocation January 3, 2018: End of Asset Allocation phase #2 Pegged currency based on color currency February 28, 2018: Launch of smart contract support April 28, 2018: Launch of lightning network support The post Garzik Forks UnitedBitcoin Away from "Maximalists" to Support Altcoin Communities appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/garzik-forks-unitedbitcoin-away-maximalists-support-altcoin-communities/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/UBfork.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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South Korea Moves to Regulate Domestic Bitcoin Trading, Exchanges Since late November 2017, South Korea has looked to regulate cryptocurrency trading in domestic exchanges, including Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit, The Korea Herald reports. Now, trying to tame the wave of wild cryptocurrency speculation in the country, South Korea is imposing trade bans for minors and looking for ways to impose taxes on investment returns. South Korea is the world’s third largest market in bitcoin trading, after Japan and the U.S., and the largest exchange market for ether, accounting for more than 33 percent of its market share, according to a recent MIT Technology Review report. The country is also home to two of the top 15 global digital-currency exchanges (Bithumb and Coinone) and believed to have about one million registered daily traders in virtual currencies, which is equivalent to about one out of every 50 citizens. This is worrying the South Korean government. In September 2017, the country’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) ordered a ban on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). In November 2017, the head of South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service said that the agency was monitoring cryptocurrency trading inside the country, and the country’s National Tax Agency revealed that it was considering a value-added tax, a capital gains tax or both on cryptocurrency trades. If the plan is implemented, South Korea will become one of the few countries to tax cryptocurrency-to-cash exchanges. The government’s concern is also motivated by the risk of cyberattacks from the country’s rogue neighbor, North Korea. According to South Korea’s National Police Agency, North Korean hackers could be targeting South Korean bitcoin exchanges. With these newest measures, North Korean banks that offer accounts for cryptocurrency trading will have to verify the identification of new account holders and prohibit minors from opening accounts. Woori Bank and Korea Development Bank will shut down virtual accounts offered to cryptocurrency exchanges before year-end, according to the banks. The regulators will also bar financial institutions from investing in or obtaining cryptocurrencies, and is considering ways to oblige cryptocurrency exchange operators to verify users’ real names, strengthen storage security of encryption keys, and disclose purchase price and order volumes. The authorities will also take strong-handed punitive actions against the perpetrators of cryptocurrency-related scams. In a press release, the government said that the new regulations were necessary “to prevent a general public without expertise from suffering losses by participating in virtual currency investments that have massive fluctuations.” These issues were discussed on Wednesday, December 13, 2017, in a meeting presided over by Hong Nam-ki, minister of the Office for Government Policy coordination, and attended by officials from the ministries of justice, finance, and science and ICT, as well as from the Financial Services Commission, the Korea Communications Commission, the Fair Trade Commission and the National Tax Service. While some news headlines are presenting this as a catastrophic development that will shut down the cryptocurrency industry in South Korea, the initiative of the South Korean authorities is in line with current trends toward stronger cryptocurrency regulations in China, Europe and the U.S. “A right set of regulations will rather nurture the (virtual currency) market, and we would welcome that,” Bithumb representatives told Reuters, adding that such a code of conduct could add legitimacy to the market. The post South Korea Moves to Regulate Domestic Bitcoin Trading, Exchanges appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/south-korea-moves-regulate-domestic-bitcoin-trading-exchanges/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/skoreaexchange.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Japan’s GMO Internet Group Will Pay Thousands of Workers in Bitcoin Blockchain development companies and the cryptocurrency press have been paying their workers in cryptocurrencies for years, but one realizes that the times are truly changing when mainstream companies start paying their workers in bitcoin. GMO Internet Group, a Japanese provider of a full spectrum of internet services for both the consumer and enterprise markets, is introducing a system for employees to receive part of their salary in bitcoin. Headquartered in Tokyo, GMO Internet Group comprises more than 60 companies in 10 countries. In view of the group’s size and financial muscle, this initiative is likely to boost the mainstream adoption of the practice of paying salaries in cryptocurrencies. The move is partly motivated by the desire to promote the adoption of Bitcoin, which is a strategic priority for GMO. In fact, the group is vigorously active in bitcoin trading and mining services, as well as mining hardware development. Therefore, anything that is good for Bitcoin is also good for GMO. In May 2017, GMO launched a cryptocurrency exchange, initially dubbed Z.com Coin and later rebranded as GMO Coin, which features cryptocurrency FX and trading on both computers and smartphones. The exchange offers two types of services: cryptocurrency FX, which is an over-the-counter (OTC) bitcoin margin trading and cryptocurrency trading, which enables buying and selling of virtual currency in JPY in addition to basic features allowing customers to send and receive bitcoins. In September 2017, GMO announced the upcoming launch of a new bitcoin mining business. “We will operate a next-generation mining center utilizing renewable energy and cutting-edge semiconductor chips in Northern Europe,” GMO stated, emphasizing that they will invest in R&D and manufacturing of hardware including the next-generation mining chip. “We will use cutting-edge 7 nm process technology for chips to be used in the mining process, and jointly work on its research and development and manufacturing with our alliance partner having semiconductor design technology.” The mining business is scheduled to start in January 2018. GMO expressed its belief that cryptocurrencies will develop into “new universal currencies” available to anyone from any country or region who wants to freely exchange value, “creating a new borderless economic zone.” The option to receive part of the salary in bitcoin will initially only be available to employees of one GMO company — GMO Internet Co. Ltd. — starting in March 2018, but it will be gradually extended to more than 4,000 employees in other GMO companies based in Japan. The minimum bitcoin payment will initially be 10,000 yen (~$88) and the upper limit will be 100,000 yen (~$881). Each salary payment in yen will be reduced by the amount of bitcoin paid, using the exchange rate at the GMO Coin exchange. Mainichi Japan notes that Japan’s labor code stipulates that businesses must pay employees in a recognized currency such as the yen, but, according to GMO, the move is in accordance with the law because any payments in bitcoin would be consensual, with a chosen amount to be deducted from paychecks and put toward purchasing bitcoin. The cryptocurrency is rising in popularity in Japan with an increasing number of retailers accepting it as a form of payment. GMO Internet Group wants to contribute to the development of cryptocurrencies in the world by promoting cryptocurrency-related initiatives throughout the group. In particular, GMO wants to promote ownership of bitcoin among its employees — who can be the best evangelists for the group’s products and services related to the digital currency — to improve the employees’ exposure to and understanding of Bitcoin. “Employers can now pay employees a portion of their net earnings in bitcoin by collaborating with niche payroll solution providers such as Bitwage, Wagepoint, or Bitpay, who manage the back-end mechanics, eliminate exposure to price volatility, and reduce compliance and governance risks,” noted Deloitte principal Eric Piscini. A recent overview of cryptocurrency payroll processors and early adopting clients notes that offering salaries in bitcoin could make it easier for companies to retain and attract talent. Besides compensating current employees, “[cryptocurrencies] could help businesses more effectively tap into the open talent economy, where individual contributors may be drawn to business partners that offer payout features only cryptocurrency makes possible: fast peer-to-peer payments across country borders with minimal friction (or total freedom) from traditional banking systems,” said Piscini. For now, the GMO press release is available only in Japanese. The post Japan's GMO Internet Group Will Pay Thousands of Workers in Bitcoin appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/japans-gmo-internet-group-will-pay-thousands-workers-bitcoin/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/JapanPay.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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IcyWallet Offers a Cold Storage Bitcoin Wallet for the Visually Impaired Safely storing cryptocurrency can be confusing, especially for newcomers to the space, but for people with visual impairments, finding an accessible option is especially challenging. IcyWallet is a cold wallet with a difference: it is designed to make it as simple as possible for people with visual impairments to manage offline bitcoin storage. The project got its start when Adam Newbold and his wife took a braille reading course as a learning activity. Shortly afterward, Newbold struck up a Reddit conversation with a blind Bitcoin enthusiast who expressed frustration with the lack of support for the blind community from Bitcoin software developers. None of the wallets worked correctly in his reader and he required help to perform any functions with bitcoin. “I learned even more about practical accessibility issues and the real-world challenges that the blind encounter every day,” Newbold told Bitcoin Magazine. “This turned into a stronger personal interest that merged with my existing interest in Bitcoin when I realized that there are pretty big opportunities for improving the state of accessibility in Bitcoin software.” He started a campaign in October 2017 to create a braille version of the original Bitcoin white paper. That campaign was successful and the document is now available for anyone wanting to get a copy. That first success led Newbold to create the IcyWallet. His goal is to provide a 100 percent free and open source bitcoin hardware wallet for the blind. Work is currently underway with early milestones achieved, the progress of which is tracked on their website. “One of the points you hear a lot about Bitcoin is that you can ‘be your own bank,’ which always sounds fun and empowering (and it is!),” said Newbold. “But it also means that you need to take responsibility for all of the things that banks do, like keeping your funds secure.” He explained that even though today’s technology has solved a substantial number of issues that people with disabilities face, when it comes to bitcoin and security, there are still several missing pieces. “There isn’t any kind of hardware wallet on the market today that’s fully accessible to people with blindness,” said Newbold, “and there are barriers to setting up secured, air-gapped solutions. This leaves people with blindness limited choices that all involve compromising security to some degree. With the IcyWallet, the private keys never leave the device.” According to Newbold, here is how the device will work: First, the transaction is generated on a (different) computer connected to the internet, so that the fee can be properly estimated; Then, the transaction is signed by the IcyWallet device; Finally, the transaction is broadcasted to the Bitcoin network back on the internet-connected device. This keeps the IcyWallet device completely offline, ensuring that the private keys are safe at all times. Users simply plug in headphones and a keyboard or a refreshable braille display. The device boots directly into the wallet app with functional audio and braille support. “Refreshable braille display support means that it will even support someone with deaf/blindness right out of the box,” said Newbold. IcyWallet generates hierarchical deterministic wallets with mnemonic seeds for safe backup. The code is developed using the BitcoinJS library and is intended to be run on an “air-gapped” Raspberry Pi, though Newbold points out that, in theory, the software can run on other hardware. Newbold has plans to make a demo video/audio track available soon, as well as an early release of the software (probably limited to wallet generation only) so that he can start to get more feedback and code suggestions that will improve the IcyWallet. As Bitcoin in particular, and cryptocurrencies in general, see wider adoption, the implementation of greater accessibility systems will be important to their continued growth. IcyWallet is expected to launch at some point in 2018. The post IcyWallet Offers a Cold Storage Bitcoin Wallet for the Visually Impaired appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/icywallet-offers-cold-storage-bitcoin-wallet-visually-impaired/ via Bitcoin News http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/mybitconnectjourney.wordpress.com/144/ REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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New In-Game Cryptocurrency Systems Let You Buy Assets in the Virtual Reality World High Fidelity is announcing the launch of Avatar Island, a VR domain where High Fidelity users can purchase items for their avatars, all contributed by digital artists from around the world. High Fidelity is a next-generation platform for Virtual Reality (VR) worlds developed by Philip Rosedale, the creator of the once very popular Second Life. In September 2017, the company announced that it was developing a blockchain for intellectual property protection and an in-game cryptocurrency . “I’ve been looking at blockchain technology since Second Life, as the Linden dollar was one of the first digital goods currencies,” said Rosedale. “At the time that Bitcoin came out, I was thinking a lot about how we could generalize what we did at Second Life. I didn’t have all of the ideas, but in the last few quarters we have been building the backend system to make all of this work.” Different sorts of VR items, such as custom wearables for avatars (which were and still are very successful in the Second Life marketplace) will be sold and bought in Avatar Island through a new cryptocurrency running on a blockchain, which will also track the history and ownership of each item. “[This] is the first beta release of the commerce system, which is a cryptocurrency-based content protection and payment system,” said Rosedale in the High Fidelity forum. “[Behind] the scenes, the currency is actually stored on a ‘blockchain’ very similar to Bitcoin but supporting a higher transaction rate and lower fees. This blockchain also stores the PoP [Proof of Provenance] information for digital goods, meaning that both your currency and your digital property will exist in a public database and cannot be altered.” Contrary to Second Life, where the only option available to external operators was to host their VR worlds on servers operated by Second Life developer Linden Lab, High Fidelity allows developers to host VR worlds independently. In November 2017, High Fidelity released an update that allows developers to rapidly deploy High Fidelity VR domains to the cloud, in collaboration with DigitalOcean. The distributed nature of the upcoming High Fidelity VR network calls for full interoperability between different servers, including network-wide recognition of ownership rights. High Fidelity’s Digital Asset Registry (DAR), is a decentralized, publicly auditable ledger that serves as a record of transactions made by High Fidelity users. Each item is uniquely identified with a digital fingerprint (a hash algorithm) and can be purchased using High Fidelity’s blockchain-based cryptocurrency, the High Fidelity Coin (HFC). The DAR includes tamper-proof PoP services for any asset’s chain of ownership, its characteristics and its entire history, from certification onward. This approach is designed to solve the theft and counterfeiting problems that plagued Second Life. At the apex of Rosedale’s first VR world’s popularity, thousands of independent developers around the world made a living designing and selling virtual items, and the need for more solid anti-piracy measures was widely felt. According to High Fidelity, the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains have limited throughput (transactions per second) and high transaction fees, which makes them unsuitable for HFC. Therefore, Rosedale’s team opted for a new, public but “permissioned” blockchain. In a promotional video that predicts a booming future for the VR sector, with a billion users, 50 million servers and a trillion dollar economy, Rosedale explains the design and implementation criteria for High Fidelity’s blockchain. “As of today, the blockchain is one node using the [Elements] codebase from Blockstream,” said Rosedale. “We’re going to federate it to a managed group of blocksigners and also provide a block explorer and a full read-only node as well, so that we have many backups of the blockchain. This is similar to the [DPoS] (Delegated Proof of Stake) model being used by [EOS] and others for upcoming public blockchains.” For now, the High Fidelity Commerce system is in closed beta, and High Fidelity is giving HFCs to anyone interested in participating in the beta. Eventually, HFC will be traded on public exchanges like other cryptocurrencies. “In the coming weeks and months, we will be attaching the HFC blockchain in several ways to the major cryptocurrency networks to enable you to freely trade HFC for other currencies like Bitcoin or Ether, or to use exchange markets to convert it back to real-world currency if you like,” said Rosedale. Considering high price volatility as a roadblock, High Fidelity will try and stabilize the value of HFC at 100 HFC = $1 USD. Before getting too excited and rushing to buy HFC, it’s worth bearing in mind that Second Life never achieved mass-market appeal, and that could become the fate of High Fidelity as well. However, it can be argued that Second Life was launched too early, and modern VR interfaces, like the headsets and hand controllers developed by Facebook’s Oculus VR, could be the game changer that will permit High Fidelity to succeed where Second Life failed. As always, time will tell. Crytek Another VR game developer and technology provider, Crytek, is announcing a partnership with cryptocurrency startup Crycash to create a new cryptocurrency for gamers. Crytek is the maker of the high-performance game development platform CryEngine and publisher of many highly realistic VR games that are popular among hardcore gamers. “The Crycash ecosystem solves two problems at once: it gives gamers a way to monetize game time by completing in-game tasks, set by game developers, while providing developers with decentralized sales options for games and other virtual items,” said Crycash CEO Wachtang Budagaschwili. “Crycash will consist of four major components: Plink, a communications app for gamers and Crycash wallet; an advertising platform; an eSports platform for gaming tournaments and other events; and a virtual asset marketplace.” “We see a lot of potential in the Crycash concept, and we were impressed by the Crycash team’s innovative approach to creating practical products and tools for gamers,” said Crytek Managing Director Faruk Yerli. Crycash will hold a token sale from December 12, 2017, to January 15, 2018, and add Crycash payment options to games from Crytek and other developers. The post New In-Game Cryptocurrency Systems Let You Buy Assets in the Virtual Reality World appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/new-game-cryptocurrency-systems-let-you-buy-assets-virtual-world/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/vrassets.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Munchee ICO Halted by SEC for Securities Violations On December 11, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC) issued a cease-and-desist to California-based Munchee Inc. to stop their ICO and return the funds that had been collected. Munchee had been seeking $15 million in capital to improve their existing mobile app and create a restaurant review ecosystem that they described as being “Yelp meets Instagram” in their Bitcointalk announcement. The problem arose when Munchee emphasized that it would take steps to create a secondary market for the tokens as an investment vehicle, leading investors to have a reasonable belief that their tokens would rise in value, long in advance of the utility of the token being made available. In the SEC announcement, Stephanie Avakian, co-director of the SEC Enforcement Division, said, “We will continue to scrutinize the market vigilantly for improper offerings that seek to sell securities to the general public without the required registration or exemption. In deciding not to impose a penalty, the Commission recognized that the company stopped the ICO quickly, immediately returned the proceeds before issuing tokens, and cooperated with the investigation.” In the SEC complaint, the commission argued that the MUN tokens were considered securities because “they were investment contracts” and were deemed a security regardless of their utility at the time of the sale. Munchee consented to the SEC’s order without admitting to, or denying, the findings. The action is significant as it shows the willingness of the SEC to step in and take action. It also illustrates a willingness on the part of the SEC to work with companies that are cooperative when they run afoul of the regulations. The post Munchee ICO Halted by SEC for Securities Violations appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/munchee-ico-halted-sec-securities-violations/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/thumbnail-23.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Bitcoin Futures Are Here: The Story So Far The week ahead will give better future indication of Bitcoin derivatives products as yesterday at 6 p.m. EST, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) allowed bitcoin futures to begin trading under the symbol “XBT.” Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is set to allow futures trading in the cryptocurrency of their own accord on December 18, 2017. Bitcoin futures were up over 20 percent leading into the U.S. market open. Current appetite for the futures contracts seems to show a stronger preference for near-term bitcoin futures priced above the current spot rate. According to the CBOE twitter feed, over 800 contracts were traded in the first two hours. Image source: CBOE delayed quotes dashboard as of 3:53 PM. EST At least one outage plagued the CBOE in early trading, including two minutes of downtime from 8:31 p.m. EST to 8:33 p.m. EST, while the CBOE stated at 11:34 p.m. EST that there would be a 5-minute hiatus if the front month (January expiration) rose above 30 percent. Image Source: http://www.cboe.com These deliberate halts in trading are known as “circuit breakers” and are meant to protect the market from unmanageable volatility. While we wait to see how futures trading unfolds in the U.S. markets today, here are some of the notable events that got us into a world of bitcoin futures. October 31 The CME Group gave bitcoin investors around the world a bit of a Halloween treat when they announced plans to allow bitcoin futures to be traded on their exchange. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s announcement notably coincided with the anniversary of the publication of Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakomoto’s original 2008 white paper on the cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts took this as a signal of mainstream acceptance of the asset class, and bitcoin closed the day (according to historical data provided by www.coinmarketcap.com) at $6,468.40. When futures trading opened last night, bitcoin was trading at $14,901.70. December 1, 2017 Regulators gave bitcoin futures the green light for the CME Group as well as for self-certification by the CBOE Futures Exchange (CFE) as well as for the Cantor Exchange’s new contract for bitcoin binary options. The exchanges assured the CFTC that the new products were compliant with the self-certification process rules, and the CFTC refrained from halting the self-certification. CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo stated in a press release: Bitcoin, a virtual currency, is a commodity unlike any the Commission has dealt with in the past…[a]s a result, we have had extensive discussions with the exchanges regarding the proposed contracts, and CME, CFE and Cantor have agreed to significant enhancements to protect customers and maintain orderly markets. December 4 The CBOE announced it would launch futures trading in bitcoin under the symbol “XBT” on Sunday night, December 10, 2017, at 6 p.m. EST. This move was seen as a manoever to beat the earlier announcement from the competing CME that they would allow futures trading in bitcoin beginning December 18, 2017. Not surprisingly, the CBOE’s usage of the exchange platform Gemini, owned by the Winklevoss twins, may allow the newly minted “Bitcoin Billionaires” to further capitalize on the successes of the cryptocurrencies. December 5 A Natixis Investment Managers Survey of 500 global investors managing more than $19 trillion of assets has found that “nearly two-thirds [of survey participants] said Bitcoin was in a bubble, and this was a month before the cryptocurrency surged above $10,000 last week.” Also bearish on bitcoin was Stephen Roach, a Yale University economist who told CNBC’s “The Rundown” that exchange legitimization makes bitcoin “somewhat dangerous [for investors],” citing a “lack of intrinsic underlying economic value to the concept.” December 6 S3 Partners, a data research and analytics firm, sent this note to investors on GBTC ETF, the only ETF which trades bitcoin. In the note, Managing Director of Predictive Analytics at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, suggested that bitcoin as an asset would be “ripe for a pullback once the CBOE futures contracts go live” but also cautioned that the fees for shorting the GBTC ETF will be extremely high. While futures contracts would enable easier and safer access to both long and short positions, Dusaniwsky noted, futures trading would also carry premium costs for all GBTC ETF investors, stating: Long GBTC holders may feel the pain of its 53% asset premium shrinking, while short sellers will probably be incurring a 50%+ stock borrow fee — both sides will be paying a premium in order to ride the Bitcoin rollercoaster once the CBOE futures start trading. Also on December 6, 2017, trading volume for BTC nearly doubled from 6.9 billion to 12.7 billion and crosses the 10 billion volume threshold for the first time since Bitcoin crossed $10,000 (November 28, 2017). Whether this run up was related to the prospect of bitcoin futures or just normal market machinations is unclear. Screenshot of historical data from Coinmarketcap.com (link above) December 7 The Futures Industry Association, an industry organization whose primary members consist of the largest clearing houses and clearing firms for futures in the world, published an open letter it had sent to the CFTC chairman on December 6, 2017, decrying the lack of “a healthy dialogue between regulators, exchanges, clearing houses and the clearing firms who will be absorbing the risk of these volatile, emerging instruments during a default.” This is in spite of the fact that the letter also admits that, “Under law, exchanges may self-certify a product for trading by the close of business one day and then list the product for trading the next day.This process does not require CFTC approval or input…” Also on December 7, in a joint interview with former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, stated that, “We’ll [Goldman Sachs] see. If it works out and it gets more established and it trades like a store value and it doesn’t move up and down 20% and there’s liquidity in it, we’ll get to it.” That same interview includes the suggestion that, according to an unnamed source with knowledge of Goldman Sachs plans, the investment bank plans to help clear bitcoin futures contracts for certain clients when the derivatives go live and that “the decision to clear client trades will be made on a case-by-case basis.” Goldman Sachs “will act in an agency capacity” and “won’t serve as a market-maker or build inventory in the derivatives.” December 8 As the normal trading week came to an end, Coinbase and its exchange platform GDAX sent a reminder from Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, to its users via blog and email to “invest responsibly,” also noting that “there may be downtime which can impact your ability to trade.” While seemingly innocuous, it appears the Coinbase team was preparing for a surge in trading volume that would crash its platform. At 10 p.m. on December 10, 2017, Coinbase tweeted that it would be offline for one hour of scheduled maintenance to “help to prevent slow performance and login issues during larger traffic surges.” Conclusion The market on Bitcoin Futures is open for business. After 14 hours of premarket bitcoin futures and a full day of trading from both European and U.S. investors, “XBT” seems to be functioning as planned. While spectators of the past week have foretold of everything from rosy outlooks to apocryphal warnings, we, at least for the moment, seem to be on a path toward embracing cryptocurrency futures as a new wave of derivatives. The post Bitcoin Futures Are Here: The Story So Far appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-futures-are-here-story-so-far/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/cboefutures.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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U.S. Senate Mulls Reporting Requirements for Cryptocurrencies American Bitcoin holders may soon have to report their holding to the United States government. First introduced on May 25, 2015, by Sen. Chuck Grassley [R-IA], Senate Bill S.1241, the “Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017,” can have serious implications for those involved in the cryptocurrency space. The hearing for S.1241 was held with virtually no public notice on November 28, 2017; the full two-hour hearing can be viewed here. Currently, the definition of “financial institution” includes banks, trust companies, credit unions, currency exchanges and the like. But according to Section 5312(a) of title 31, the new bill would amend the definition of “financial institution” to include “an issuer, redeemer, or cashier of prepaid access devices, digital currency, or any digital exchanger or tumbler of digital currency.” This is most specifically embedded in Section 13: Sen. Dianne Feinstein [D-CA] said in her opening remarks of the hearing, “The bill criminalizes intentionally concealing ownership or control of a bank account.” Although, during the hearing, no further clarifications were given as to the effects this would have on the cryptocurrency community, based on the amended definition of “financial institution,” it would seem that the bill would criminalize anyone intentionally concealing ownership or control of a digital currency or exchange account. While there is no finalized bill yet, the implication would be that cryptocurrency holders need to fill in federal registration forms for tax disclosure, quarterly reporting and more. Notably, while the purpose of the bill and hearing had to do with adding digital currencies and exchanges to the definition of financial institutions, there was almost no discussion on the topic other than briefly in reference to drug cartels using them to launder money. For example, nowhere in the testimony by Coinbase board of directors member Kathryn Haun Rodriguez does she mention digital currencies or exchanges, and at no time was she asked any questions about them. Unsurprisingly, the bill is receiving pushback from some cryptocurrency holders. Activists on Reddit have started a social media campaign in opposition to the bill, and are suggesting others to tweet: “@senjudiciary that #Bitcoiners are not #Crooks Remove #DigitalCurrencies from Section 13 of S1241.” Others are contacting their senators directly. The post U.S. Senate Mulls Reporting Requirements for Cryptocurrencies appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/us-senate-mulls-reporting-requirements-cryptocurrencies/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/US-SenateBill.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Op-ed: Bitcoin Is Not a Bubble; It’s in an S-Curve and It’s Just Getting Started One of the most intriguing stories underpinning the recent rise of bitcoin prices is how financial institutions will interact with the currency. The upcoming CBOE futures market is going to open the door for Wall Street giants to participate in the market. That could spell moon or doom for bitcoin, and everyone is speculating on what may happen next. It is this Wall Street/BTC interaction (phenomenon) that may be driving the unbelievable price spike of the past few days — at least partially. On the macro scale, however, we may be witnessing a more grand pattern forming; a price-correlated S-curve. The S-curve is the classic adoption curve applied to the advent of new technologies. As a percentage of the population, adoption looks like a lag phase where the technology is utilized by the innovators of said technology, followed by an early adoption phase led by people who often take risks in order to be the first movers in a space. After the early adopter phase (~16% of the population is now participating), there comes a great “tipping point” where the wide use of the technology seems inevitable. The tipping point gives rise to the “Early Majority” joining in on the fun, followed by the late majority and, finally, the holdouts who allow the top of the S to asymptotically approach total adoption. The curve, as a factor of time and adoption, looks sort of like the following: This curve correlates nicely with adoption of some of the greatest technological innovations in our recent history: Some important things to note is that this is just U.S. adoption. Much of the world lagged behind the U.S. in the consumer appliance boom of the 1900s. All of these curves, however steep, do follow the same S-curve trend fairly nicely. So what could that mean for bitcoin? It’s difficult to choose a metric to define bitcoin adoption, and, in fact, there are disputes about if one metric accurately captures it. However, for simplicity I’ll highlight Google searches for bitcoin and Coinbase user count as microcosms of the global adoption trend. (from CNBC) This seems to show a very similar pattern to what could be the transitional phase between “innovators” and “Early Adopters.” Just to harken back to the earlier statement though — it’s very difficult to put a number on bitcoin adoption. So why is this remarkable? Bitcoin may be the first “buyable” S-curve. Because this is a capped-supply currency, more users adopting and using it necessitates an increase in price. Whether that correlation is even reflective of the current price action is a practically unanswerable question, and the obvious leaning would be towards there being a speculative additional value. However, with an increase in adoption, there seems to be a floor rising up to catch whatever “bubble burst” might occur, if and when it happens. I'm starting to take the controversial position that I'm less looking at a financial market chart and more looking at a graph for adoption rates. $BTC pic.twitter.com/RmGFyCdwan — Parabolic Trav (@parabolictrav) December 3, 2017 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js “Eternal September” is the phrase used to describe September of 1993, when widespread internet adoption began to look inevitable. It occured after AOL began a mailing campaign offering free trials of its internet service, leading to an influx of internet users that has since never ended. Hence “Eternal September.” Always thought it would take another bubble for the #crypto equivalent, but this might be the start of #Bitcoin Eternal September https://t.co/95PaF9ZYD7 — David Bailey (@DavidFBailey) December 6, 2017 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js To compare bitcoin’s adoption to its complement — the internet — this may very well be the “Eternal September” episode for bitcoin. If the S-curve adoption theory applies to bitcoin, then buckle up. I won’t pretend to be able to predict a spot price, but I will say I think we may be sitting close to another order of magnitude this time next year. See y’all on the moon. Corollary: Bulls sound smart in bull markets. We may look back and laugh at this thought, or it may hold true for years to come. Time will tell. ‘Til then, buy bitcoin. Trading and investing in digital assets like bitcoin and ether is highly speculative and comes with many risks. This analysis is for informational purposes and should not be considered investment advice. Statements and financial information on Bitcoin Magazine and BTC Media related sites do not necessarily reflect the opinion of BTC Media and should not be construed as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell or hold. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. The post Op-ed: Bitcoin Is Not a Bubble; It's in an S-Curve and It's Just Getting Started appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-bitcoin-not-bubble-its-s-curve-and-its-just-getting-started/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/SCurve-Bitcoin.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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How To Verify Your Coins.ph Account (Pictures) If you think scrolling down is long and boring, watch this video tutorial instead: Here’s a step by step guide on how to verify your coins.ph account 1. Login to your coins.ph account 2. On your dashboard, go to limits and verifications Phone Verification (Part I) 3. Click verify now under phone verification 4. Fill out mobile details and click send code 5. Enter the code that was sent to your phone 6. A window will pop-up informing you that your phone number has been verified. Identity Verification (Part II) 7. Click verify now under identify verification 8. Choose the option that applies 9. Fill out the required fields 10. Choose the option that applies 11. Fill out the required fields and upload your scanned id 12. Check all the boxes and click submit Selfie Verification (Part III) 13. Click continue for selfie verification 14. Take a photo of yourself holding the id that you use to verify your account 15. Click ok to allow camera to take your selfie 16. Take a selfie and then upload 17. All checkbox are grayed out once you are done with the verification steps 18. Wait for the approval, it may take 3-7 days. Once everything is approved it should say ‘Complete’ below each verification steps. Check back to your account if its already been approved. If you are having trouble signing up to coins.ph, kindly check my blog on ‘How to Sign Up to Coins.ph‘. https://mybitconnectjourney.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/1-login-to-your-coins-ph-account.png?w=748 REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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It’s A Wonderful Life for Bitcoin Evangelist as Community Expresses Its Gratitude https://mybitconnectjourney.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/its-a-wonderful-life-for-bitcoin-evangelist-as-community-expresses-its-gratitude/ https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/thanksandreas_vIvV3qF.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Out of Steam: PC Gaming Platform Ends Bitcoin Payment Option https://mybitconnectjourney.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/out-of-steam-pc-gaming-platform-ends-bitcoin-payment-option/ https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/steamVbtc.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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New Bitcoin Mining Centers Set to Increase North American Market Position https://mybitconnectjourney.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/new-bitcoin-mining-centers-set-to-increase-north-american-market-position/ https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/bitfuryhut8.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Quant Network Launches Overledger for Cross-Blockchain Data Interoperability https://mybitconnectjourney.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/quant-network-launches-overledger-for-cross-blockchain-data-interoperability/ https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/quant.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Regulation and the Future of Cryptocurrency at Token Summit II https://mybitconnectjourney.wordpress.com/2017/12/06/regulation-and-the-future-of-cryptocurrency-at-token-summit-ii/ https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/tokensummit17.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Developers Release Lightning Protocol 1.0; Perform Successful Interoperability Tests https://mybitconnectjourney.wordpress.com/2017/12/06/developers-release-lightning-protocol-1-0-perform-successful-interoperability-tests/ https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/ltng10.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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How To Sign Up To Coins.ph (Pictures) https://mybitconnectjourney.wordpress.com/2017/12/06/how-to-sign-up-to-coins-ph-pictures/ REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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1btc= $10000

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Repost Dear Friends and Family, Please do not invest in Cryptocurrency. It will give you the financial breakthrough that you have been praying for. It will allow you to experience more things in this world with your loved ones. You will be able to help more people. You will no longer need to work long hours in your office or potentially leave your tiring job. You will have a chance to create your own business, pursue your passion. You can turn your dreams into reality. You will be able to do those things you have been longing to do. So please never learn and study about it. Surely your life will be changed!

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