Wallet Developers Express Security Concerns Over BitPay’s Payment Protocol Policy On December 14, 2017, BitPay announced a first step toward enforcing the payment protocol: All orders of the BitPay Card will require payments from Payment Protocol-compatible wallets, such as BitPay’s own wallet and a few others. This announcement came after an initial notice in November 2017, when BitPay first announced that BitPay invoices would soon require payments from wallets compatible with the Bitcoin Payment Protocol. BitPay’s move has since been met with resistance by some wallet developers that don’t support the Bitcoin Payment Protocol; some are suggesting that BitPay is abusing its leading position in the payment processing space and putting user security at risk. “We absolutely do not support BitPay in aggressively using their dominant position of market share to bully wallet providers into supporting their business plans or bully users into a system that degrades their privacy and the fungibility of bitcoin as a whole,” stated bitcoin wallet Samourai in its blog post of January 2, 2018. The Bitcoin Payment Protocol (BIP70), proposed by Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn in 2013, describes a protocol for communication between a merchant and their customer, “enabling both a better customer experience and better security against man-in-the-middle attacks on the payment process.” A detailed explanation of the details of the payment protocol, written by Mike Hearn in Q/A format, is available on the Bitcoin forum. According to BitPay, the Payment Protocol will reduce user error in bitcoin payments, such as payments sent to a wrong address or with a transaction fee that is too low for fast processing by the Bitcoin network. “We answer thousands of customer support requests every month, and we see first-hand how these problems affect BitPay merchants and their customers,” notes BitPay, adding that if two wallets both “speak” Payment Protocol, the correct receiving bitcoin address and the correct sending amount are locked in automatically by creating an SSL-secured connection to the true owner of the receiving bitcoin address. Instead of cryptic Bitcoin addresses, the protocol uses human readable identifiers, which are then mapped to Bitcoin addresses. “Our next step will be requiring Payment Protocol payments for all BitPay Card loads,” stated BitPay. “From there, we will move to require Payment Protocol for all BitPay invoices … We continue to work with other wallet providers in the Bitcoin ecosystem to advance adoption of the Bitcoin Payment Protocol. We’re encouraged by the response we have received. Widespread adoption of Payment Protocol will immediately improve the bitcoin payment experience.” According to a list provided on the BitPay website, Copay, Mycelium and Electrum wallets, along with Bitcoin Core, support Payment Protocol payments. “These true bitcoin wallets all already ‘speak’ Payment Protocol,” stated BitPay. “If you are using a non-Payment Protocol wallet or service to pay BitPay invoices, you will need to move your spending bitcoin to a wallet or service which can support Payment Protocol. We strongly recommend that you use a true bitcoin wallet for spending to avoid delayed transactions, but you will be able to use any service compatible with Payment Protocol.” This list, however, is out-of-date. Bitcoin Magazine reached out to several other wallets to verify their status. “Our currently released app Airbitz does support BIP70 and has since 2015,” Paul Puey, Co-Founder and CEO of AirBitz (recently rebranded as Edge), told Bitcoin Magazine. “Edge Wallet (currently in beta) will support BIP70 in a future production version.” BitPay currently lists Airbitz as not supporting BIP70. Bread also has supported BIP70 since 2015, contrary to information supplied on BitPay’s list. Security Concerns One of the most outspoken opponents of this policy shift has been Samourai Wallet. “We have to be very clear here,” Samourai stated bluntly in its recent blog post. “Samourai Wallet will not support BIP70 in our products, therefore, our wallet users will NOT be able to send bitcoin to QR codes generated by BitPay invoices, as they do not provide a valid Bitcoin address.” According to Samourai, BIP70 “remains largely unadopted by the majority of wallet and service providers” due to many security and privacy concerns, including the required support of legacy public-key infrastructure features with known vulnerabilities, such as OpenSSL and Heartbleed. Indeed, the recent revelations about Meltdown and Spectre have created additional security concerns among some critics. “Meltdown/Spectre greatly increase the risk of keys being stolen from memory,” James Hilliard, developer and MyRig engineer, told Bitcoin Magazine, “since they are side-channel attacks that allow processes to spy on the memory other processes (wallet private keys generally have to go into memory at some point in order to sign the transaction).” “We do share some of the concerns but do not feel as strongly as Samourai Wallet,” said Puey. “In the case of the acquisition of a payment QR code from a website, one is already trusting SSL public key infrastructure to know that a public address is from the owner. Adding BIP70 to that makes it no worse. However, if one is doing a peer-to-peer transaction between two wallets that are physically next to each other, there is no need to rely on an https server query to obtain a public address, and that process absolutely introduces more risk than necessary.” Many bitcoin wallets, including Coinbase and Jaxx, don’t support BIP70 at the moment. Others, like Airbitz and its upcoming Edge, support BIP70 but less enthusiastically than BitPay. Addison Cameron-Huff is President of Decentral, the company that develops the Jaxx wallet. Referring to BitPay’s statement that BIP70 does for Bitcoin what secured web-browsing (HTTPS) did for the internet, he told Bitcoin Magazine, “I think BitPay is overstating the case for BIP70. It’s also a bit misleading to refer to BIPs as ‘standards,’” adding that the “BIP” acronym stands for “Bitcoin Improvement Proposal,” not “Bitcoin Improvement Standard.” “Not showing addresses is a big change in how people use Bitcoin, and, as of January 2018, I think it’s premature to force this change ecosystem-wide, but BitPay is only insisting upon this for people who want to use BitPay,” continued Cameron-Huff. “We’ll see over the coming months how this change affects their user base and whether alternative payment processing firms win marketshare (or don’t). Ultimately, the cryptocurrency world is one in which the best products and proposals tend to win out in the market, and only time will tell whether this was a good decision for BitPay and more importantly: a good decision for the Bitcoin community.” “We have had multiple conversations with BitPay and have expressed our concerns with the BIP70 protocol including unnecessary complications that do not truly solve the problems presented,” said Puey. “We feel that extensions to the BIP21 spec could have been implemented that would have achieved the same goals that BitPay desired without the added complications, centralization or SSL security implications.” “While we intend to continue supporting BIP70 we do NOT recommend that providers use it or require it to receive payment and instead pursue extensions to BIP21 instead,” concluded Puey. “We have experienced a multitude of issues with BitPay’s support of BIP70 including their own servers being unable to provide payment information through the provided payment URL causing wallets to fallback to BIP21-style payments if capable.” Future Adoption Bread wallet CMO Aaron Lasher told Bitcoin Magazine that while Bread already supports BIP70, the company has plans to “make it work with BitPay in an upcoming release.” He emphasized that it will be important to maintain the wallet’s core functionality and ensure that its high level of privacy remains. “Bread is a consumer-focused wallet, so we support anything at face value that improves or simplifies the user experience, provided we are able to maintain sufficient privacy and financial control on behalf of our users.” Similarly, Cameron-Huff explained that while Jaxx doesn’t currently support BIP70, if BIP70 becomes an actual widely adopted standard, then Jaxx will enable it for users. “We will be keeping an eye on this change with BitPay and other large blockchain ecosystem organizations,” concluded Cameron-Huff. “We are always looking to improve Jaxx but also have to balance this with not forcing changes upon our users or implementing hasty changes that might cause a negative experience for our 600,000 users.” A representative from the hardware wallet Ledger told Bitcoin Magazine, “We do not plan yet to support BIP70 directly in our wallet as it’d only make sense if we could offer an end-to-end support to the hardware wallet which is not doable yet, considering the complexity of this protocol.” Ledger added that it might support it through a translating gateway later in the future while keeping users aware of the extra risks. Like Airbitz/Edge, the company expressed a preference for BIP21. “Security wise, we also believe that BIP70 is not in a great state today (not supporting ECDSA certificates, duplicating standard PKI issues where users have to authenticate possible rogue certificates, possibly forcing public authentication cookies on users through specific outputs) and would appreciate if all payment providers could keep offering regular BIP21 URLs for interoperability.” The post Wallet Developers Express Security Concerns Over BitPay’s Payment Protocol Policy appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/wallet-developers-express-security-concerns-over-bitpays-payment-protocol-policy/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/bitpayBIP70.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Bad News Bears: Cryptocurrency Stories of 2017 That Brought Us Down 2017 has seen its spate of both good and bad stories for all sides of the cryptocurrency space. Whether you believe in dutch tulips or you worship at the altar of Satoshi Nakamoto, there were reaffirming and disheartening stories for evcxzxeryone. Below are five of the stories that darkened an otherwise positive year for the industry. Segwit2x vs. #No2x Bitcoin supporters and detractors alike acknowledged that scalability was an issue in the cryptocurrency. It triggered stakeholders in the currency and surrounding ecosystem to come together on May 23, 2017, and announce a scaling agreement before the Consensus 2017 Meeting in New York (sometimes called the “New York Agreement”). The agreement dictated parallel upgrades to the bitcoin protocol, activating a Segregated Witness at a 80% hash power threshold and activating a hard fork to double the block weight limit within six months. Here’s some analysis on the implication of the forks. That hard fork, also referred to as Segwit2x, was meant to occur on November 16, 2017, but was cancelled on November 8, 2017. While the first half of the agreement was carried out successfully in August, support for Segwit2x fell through for a number of reasons. Recently, there was a supposed “implementation” of the now defunct Segwit2x fork, but the development team related to this new Segwit2x is unknown and there is no association to those that were behind the New York Agreement. Ransomware Hacks Remind Public of Criminals’ Preference for Bitcoin Although Ransomware hacks have been around for years, 2017 was particularly nasty (see our article here for four things you should know about the viruses). In May, a ransomware called WannaCry shocked the world by holding Microsoft computers hostage using an operating system exploit, encrypting the files on infected computers and demanding a $300 payment in bitcoin for their release. The hack had debilititating implications for users running outdated Microsoft operating systems around the world, striking particularly hard at the United Kingdom’s government healthcare provider, the NHS. The choice of payment in bitcoin seemingly caused a negative shock to the price. Finally on August 3, 2017, the wallets belonging to the hackers were emptied. All told, those responsible jettisoned $143,000 worth of bitcoin, leaving a much larger amount of damage in their wake. This wasn’t the only major ransomware attack of the year of course: On June 27, 2017, one ransomware attack using a variant of the ransomware known as “Petya” took down computers in over 80 companies. Some notable victims of the attack included British Media Advertising Conglomerate WPP plc, global law firm DLA Piper, international commercial shipping company Maersk, pharmaceutical juggernaut Merck and FedEx. While this ransomware attack also demanded $300 in bitcoin, they received far less than the WannaCry hackers, roughly $10,000 USD (almost 4 BTC at the time of the attack). However, the damage done to the affected companies far outstripped the gains of the hackers, with Merck, Maersk and FedEx all announcing estimated revenues lost due to the hack at $300 million for each company. Bcash/BCH/Bitcoin… What’s in a Name? The debate over Bitcoin Cash will likely be the most controversial topic covered in this article. Roger Ver has been very vocal in promoting the idea that Bitcoin Cash is the real bitcoin. So does the subreddit /r/btc, which he moderates. This forum is often at odds with /r/Bitcoin, and one needs to look no further than to these two different trending posts on each forum, respectively, to see the animosity. Bitcoin Cash is the result of the August 1, 2017, SegWit fork, which allowed holders of BTC to inherit a second cryptocurrency that inherited the transaction history of bitcoin on that date but allowed all future transactions to be separate. The enthusiasm behind relative newcomer BCH is obvious as CoinMarketCap cites BCH as currently the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, sometimes trending as high as 2nd. While exchanges from Kraken to Bitfinex have adopted BCH into the fold, some, such as Coinbase, have been initially resistant to granting wallet users access to the BCH portion of the fork (Coinbase has since adopted BCH onto its platform but not without the controversy discussed below). Whether its advocates are right in the belief that BCH will supplant BTC or anti-BCH proponents are right that a usurper is not in the making, the drama and infighting show no signs of waning for these cryptocurrency stakeholders. China’s Central Bank Bans ICOs On September 4, 2017, the Chinese government’s central monetary authority, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), said “so long” to ICOs. In a statement released by the PBOC’s Chinese Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), token sales in the country, “should be stopped immediately,” noting that, “organizations and individuals that have completed the financing of tokens issuance should make arrangements such as clearance to reasonably protect the rights and interests of investors and properly handle the risks.” While China has, in the past, had tightly controlled potential exits for capital leaving the country, ICO entrepreneurs remained optimistic as the country with the largest population of bitcoin miners sought to crackdown on the new asset class. Supporters of ICO offerings were dismayed as the world’s 2nd largest economy closed its doors to the new asset class, many cited the actions by the PBOC to be reasonable and view the news as good for anti-scamming activities and also as temporary. This may be one of those short-term negative/long-term positive stories. Exchange Woes Plague Coinbase, Bitfinex and Youbit. Cryptocurrency exchanges found both great success and major setbacks in 2017. Among the setbacks: In a Northern District of California Federal Court, Coinbase lost a court battle with the IRS which forced the company to disclose identifying records of all users who received more than $20,000 in a single year between 2013 and 2015. The November 28, 2017, loss signals a likely attempt by the IRS to collect data on unreported or undisclosed gains by U.S. taxpayers and may hint at heightened scrutiny of cryptocurrency investors’ reported returns in future years. Coinbase also closed the year on a sour note when the company disclosed it was investigating possible insider trading claims related to the company’s onboarding of Bitcoin Cash for use in its wallet and trading on its subsidiary platform, GDAX. Bitfinex also faced a rollercoaster year, recovering in early 2017 from a $72 million hack in August 2016. However, the exchange has since halted services to U.S. investors on November 9, 2017, and come under scrutiny for its management of its Tether tokens. The company eventually lawyered up in early December to explore potential defamation lawsuits against its more vocal critics. South Korean Exchange Youbit shuttered its doors after a second successful hack in 2017 resulted in a loss of 17 percent of its assets. Other exchanges have survived successive hacks in a single year, but the Youbit closure shows that not all exchanges can recover. These are a few of the dark spots on an otherwise remarkably positive year, so it’s important to keep in mind all the fantastic progress that has been made in the space. Check out our top “Good News” stories of 2017. The post Bad News Bears: Cryptocurrency Stories of 2017 That Brought Us Down appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bad-news-bears-cryptocurrency-stories-2017-brought-us-down/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/2017badnews.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Bitcoin Price Analysis: Bitcoin Poised for a Potentially Large Market Move Over the last month, bitcoin has seen large swings in price as the bulls scramble to call the bottom and the bears scramble to call the top of the market. The market saw a 50% retracement a few weeks ago, leading the bullish investors to “buy the dip” only to see it quickly top out and retrace again. Volatility is no stranger to bitcoin and the swings have been violent: Figure 1: BTC-USD, 2-Hour Candles, Macro Trading Range Zooming out, we can see the market has been bound within a trading range. Continuing from our previous discussions about the potential of a distribution trading range, we can see bounces decreasing not only in volume but in price volatility. These bounces (labeled “LPSY” for “last point of supply”) give us hints as to the ultimate direction this trend might head. The pink dashed line shows a trend of lower highs that are coupled with overall, decreasing volume indicating that not only is demand drying up, but supply is increasing. When put in the context of the macro trend, bitcoin appears to be consolidating in a sideways fashion:Figure 2: BTC-USD, 6-Hour Candles, Macro View The price over the last couple weeks has begun to narrow as the price volatility is decreasing along with the volume. While it could be argued that this type of consolidation represents a “Bear Pennant,” for the sake of neutrality, we can view this as a “symmetrical triangle”: Figure 3: BTC-USD, 6-Hour Candles, Symmetrical Triangle A triangle of this magnitude would have an approximate $6,500 move. Typically, symmetrical triangles are agnostic and can lead to a bullish or bearish breakout. If this triangle breaks upward, we can expect to see a price target of $22,000 or so. However, if this consolidation pattern breaks to the bottom of the triangle, we can expect to see prices as low as $7,000. Summary: Bitcoin is beginning to see decreased volatility as the volume begins to consolidate in the $14,000 values. A symmetrical triangle is beginning to form that could possibly break upward or downward. If the symmetrical triangle breaks upward, bitcoin can possibly see prices in the low $20,000s. If the triangle breaks downward, we can expect to see bitcoin test the $7,000s. 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: Bitcoin Poised for a Potentially Large Market Move appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-price-analysis-bitcoin-poised-potentially-large-market-move/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/BitcoinPrice3.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Cardano Blockchain’s First Use Case: Proof of University Diplomas in Greece Greek graduates may soon be able to prove their qualifications by way of a blockchain. GRNET, the national research and education network of Greece, is working on a pilot project with blockchain research and development company IOHK to verify student diplomas on Cardano, a blockchain that launched in September. The project is notable because it is the first official use case of Cardano, a proof-of-stake-based cryptocurrency and soon-to-be smart contract platform currently under development by IOHK. The GRNET app will be built on Enterprise Cardano, a private or permissioned ledger version of Cardano. Unlike a public blockchain, where anyone can join in and participate, a private blockchain allows only a restricted set of users to validate block transactions. So far, three Greek universities are participating in the project. While IOHK is providing the decentralized database, GRNET is providing the web front end and support and will bring together other universities participating beyond the pilot. Funding for the project comes in part from Horizon 2020, a European program for research and innovation. Development of the prototype is already under way, Aggelos Kiayias, IOHK’s chief scientist, told Bitcoin Magazine. Why Diplomas? Given IOHK’s deep ties with academia, it is no surprise to find the company working on a project that involves universities. But why diplomas? Putting diplomas on a blockchain takes the paperwork out of the process and makes it easy and simple to check if someone holds a degree. Typically, when a student graduates, they receive a paper copy of a diploma signed by the dean and co-signed the university’s registrar. All of the students’ transcripts and records are stored in the university’s centralized database. To confirm that a graduate has the degree they claim to have, an employer has to check the official diploma or call the university. The labor-intensive process makes it too easy for unqualified applicants to slip under the radar. Putting documents and records on the blockchain eliminates opportunity for fraud in that it allows graduates and universities to “issue a proof that a qualification exists that is undeniable,” said Kiayias. “This is a point of reference that can be agreed [on] by everyone.” Cryptographic Proof But to protect student privacy, instead of putting an entire diploma on the blockchain, GRNET plans to put only a cryptographic hash of a diploma on the blockchain. Digital documents are easy to alter in ways that are undetectable to the human eye. But as long as the digital version shown to an employer hashes to the same output as what is stored on the blockchain, that proves the document is the original, unaltered version. “We cannot put any plaintext on the blockchain, as diplomas and transcripts are personal information. We only put hashes; we may put entire diplomas and transcripts, but they will always be encrypted,” Panos Louridas, GRNET consultant and associate professor at Athens University of Economics and Business, explained to Bitcoin Magazine in an email. This is not the first effort to store diplomas on the blockchain. In October, MIT announced its own pilot project to verify digital diplomas using the blockchain. But Louridas claims the GRNET pilot is different from prior projects in that it stores the entire chain of verification steps on the blockchain. Each step would be recorded as its own immutable transaction on a separate block in the blockchain. “You don’t really need a blockchain to store diplomas: a simple system with some digital signatures by the host institution would do,” he said. “We want to be able to record that somebody has asked for proof of a degree, that the proof has been granted, that the proof has been forwarded to a verifier, and that the verifier can verify that the degree is valid, and nobody can dispute any of the above steps.” The three Greek universities taking part in the pilot include Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Democritus University of Thrace and Athens University of Economics and Business. The post Cardano Blockchain's First Use Case: Proof of University Diplomas in Greece appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/cardano-blockchains-first-use-case-proof-university-diplomas-greece/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/Cardanodiploma.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Keep an Eye Out for These Bitcoin Tech Trends in 2018 The post Keep an Eye Out for These Bitcoin Tech Trends in 2018 appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/keep-eye-out-these-bitcoins-tech-trends-2018/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/toptrends2018-header-1400x400fills.width-800.png REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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In Search of a Complete Guide to Initial Coin Offerings Interest in cryptocurrencies is at a fever pitch with untold numbers of token projects taking place every month. Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have yielded north of $1 billion in 2017, making this, clearly, the year of token launches. In Q3 alone, ICOs captured more than $1.3 billion for related ventures. This is estimated to be five times more than all of the venture capital funding raised in the blockchain industry. Amid this sea of activity, the average investor is left to stumble around aimlessly in search of comprehensive, up-to-date information about the cryptocurrency world. Most of these investors, big and small, are anxious to capitalize on some of the investment gains tied to bitcoin’s and other cryptocurrency’s meteoric rises. In this environment, blind corners abound with participants tasked with steering clear of poorly conceived crypto projects, some of which are outright scams. On the other hand, some people choose to opt out completely, intimidated by the complexity of this nascent landscape. In doing one’s due diligence, knowing what red flags to look for can be the difference between a positive experience or the loss of significant money. The Epiphany With over 200 ICOs launched in 2017, due diligence exacts a heavy burden, even for experienced investment analysts, let alone amateur investors. Moreover, blockchain technology is still in its infancy, an early-stage advancement that is fueling new projects and use cases every day. Unfortunately, few educational sites exist that provide comprehensive up-to-date information regarding this space. With the unrelenting uptick of interest, replete with esoteric terminology and uncertain regulatory structures, it is a growth trajectory that is likely to continue in 2018 and beyond. The Response Sensing the need and demand, a growing number of websites are appearing with the goal of delivering better and more comprehensive information about ICOs and the altcoins they produce. One example is ICO Token News, which offers a comprehensive look at ICO basics, statistics, the growth of altcoins and the status of blockchain technology in general. It also provides a listing of upcoming conferences and events for those desiring to meet the movers and shakers in the ICO landscape. Another example, Crypto Coin Judge, provides cryptocoin casino reviews, unbiased broker reviews on fundamentals in Bitcoin and Ethereum, including profitable trading and investment strategies. The Promise As today’s ICO landscape continues to evolve, participants will desire more and more educational portals that allow them to become better informed and more thoughtful with respect to their decisions. Sites like the ones noted above, while still relatively early in the game, are promising. They offer a timely response to what people need. Note: Trading and investing in digital assets is speculative and can be high-risk. Based on the shifting business and regulatory environment of such a new industry, this content should not be considered investment or legal advice. The post In Search of a Complete Guide to Initial Coin Offerings appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/search-complete-guide-initial-coin-offerings/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/Thumb_Image.width-800.png REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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Our Top 5 Bitcoin “Good News” Stories of 2017 When the history of Bitcoin and blockchains is written, 2017 will be the year tagged as the “turning point” when Bitcoin and “red hot” blockchain technology went mainstream. The steadily rising bitcoin price and market cap is a key, though not the only, indicator that a tipping point has been reached. Despite turmoil like ICOs being banned in China and South Korea, cryptocurrencies in general coming under scrutiny in other countries, and internal divisions and infighting in the Bitcoin community, the price of bitcoin continued its steady trend upward, accelerating in the last few months of 2017 despite naysayers. The following were some of Bitcoin Magazine‘s most popular “good news” stories from 2017 — only a small sample of the many breakthroughs that illuminated this remarkable year. 5. Philanthropy Lives on the Blockchain 2017 saw good news from Bitcoiners who went out of their way to share their cryptocurrency wealth through projects like the Pineapple Fund, set up by the pseudonymous “Pine,” to donate 5,057 BTC to charitable causes like Watsi, the Water Project, EFF, SENS Research Foundation and BitGive. In October 2017, nonprofit BitGive itself launched its beta version of GiveTrack, a blockchain-based platform that allows donors to donate bitcoin to charitable causes and track those donations in real-time. At the end of 2017, hearts also reached out to Andreas Antonopoulos, who had not been able to hold on to his early bitcoins as he worked for years to advocate on behalf of the Bitcoin community. Bitcoiners sent donations of more than 100 BTC, worth about $1.7 million at the time, to show their appreciation for his years of devotion to the Bitcoin cause. 4. DragonMint Helps Make Mining More Decentralized As Bitcoin mining becomes more challenging, it’s also becoming more centralized around a few larger companies that have sufficient capital, the latest equipment and access to reliable energy sources. An estimated 70 percent of hash power produced on the network today is produced by Bitmain for their own or affiliated mining pools. In 2017, to offer some competition and shake up the market, Halong Mining launched the DragonMint 16T, with newly designed chips producing 16 terahashes per second. It claims to be 30 percent more energy-efficient than the most efficient ASIC miner currently on the market. 3. A Major Step Forward in the Development of Bitcoin: SegWit Finally Activates After months of contentious debate in the Bitcoin development community, Segregated Witness (SegWit), a major technical innovation to the Bitcoin network, was deployed in early August. A Bitcoin developer, Shaolinfry, proposed a user-activated soft fork (UASF) so that users could set a deadline for enforcing the new rules instead of having the miners activate the soft fork. A number of factors contributed to SegWit’s launch, including its successful deployment on Litecoin, the AsicBoost controversy and the contentious New York Agreement. The rising price of bitcoin can be attributed, at least in part, to SegWit’s successful integration into Bitcoin’s core software in 2017. 2. Regulators Approve Listing Bitcoin Futures as Mainstream Investments U.S. regulators recently granted approval for two investment funds to list and trade bitcoin, making 2017 the year that mainstream futures markets first accepted bitcoin as a legitimate investment. The world’s largest derivatives marketplace operator, CME Group Inc. launched bitcoin futures trading on December 18. Also launching bitcoin futures trading in 2017 were Cboe Futures Exchange and Cantor Exchange, bringing investment in bitcoin to the fore. 1. Price of Bitcoin Reaches $10,000 and Beyond Despite a year of turmoil and division, bitcoin reached a major milestone, breaking through the $10,000 barrier and rising above that in recent weeks. At the time of publishing, bitcoin was trading at around $14,500, more than 10 times its value at the beginning of the year. What some have (probably erroneously) called a bubble doesn’t appear ready to burst anytime soon. The current bitcoin market cap, the value of all bitcoin in existence, is $247 billion, even greater than such companies as GE, Goldman Sachs and UBS Group, as well as countries like New Zealand, Algeria, Iraq and Romania. The post Our Top 5 Bitcoin “Good News” Stories of 2017 appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine. from My Bitconnect Journey https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/our-top-5-bitcoin-good-news-stories-2017/ via Bitcoin News https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/good_news.width-800.jpg REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/goN4bcc

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