Who knows about Bitcoin?

For discussion of liberty, freedom, government and politics.
Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-3 ... ious-means

The Government Continues Attempts To Take Down Bitcoin Through Nefarious Means

Oct 31, 2017 1:23 PM

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The government really dislikes it when people make a living by conducting moral business practices without paying for their permission to do so.

This is all too evident when examining the most recent arrest of a man for selling Bitcoin.

According to local news media reports, a Michigan man named Bradley Anthony Stetkiw has been charged by local authorities for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.

The charges have been filed in US District Court. According to an indictment released by Detroit TV news services WD-IV Friday, the 52-year-old ran an exchange through the LocalBitcoins website, conducting transactions at restaurants in the Bloomfield area.



Stetkiw is alleged to have sold bitcoin without a license (paying for permission from the government) as part of a business venture for approximately two years.

After selling about $150,000 in bitcoin, the feds set up a sting operation to catch Stetkiw. He sold more than $56,000 worth of bitcoin to federal agents through six meetings. Authorities say that that volume of transactions makes him subject to federal anti-money laundering regulations.

The government is not alleging that Stetkiw harmed anyone or took any property.

He’s in trouble for not paying to register himself as a business. According to the indictment:

Operating under the user name ‘SaltandPepper,’ Stetkiw bought, sold and brokered deals for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoins while failing to comply with the money transmitting business registration requirements set fort in Title 31, United States Code, Section 5330.
Earlier this year, Detroit resident Sal Mansy plead guilty to the charge of operating an unlicensed money services business. He allegedly conducted $2.4 million-worth of transactions over a two-year period ending in July 2015.

Other arrests in Missouri and New York suggest actions against independent U.S. bitcoin sellers are becoming more commonplace.

These arrests also suggest what many have feared for years: the government is attempting to take down bitcoin using nefarious means since they cannot figure out how to regulate the cryptocurrency.

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

The price of one Bitcoin is now $6879. https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/

On 8Sep2017 when I first posted in this thread, the price actually fell from about $4600 to about $4200. Over $2000 gain in less than two months. Percentage-wise it's more than the bank is paying on your savings account. Those kind of gains are scary, but most cryptocurrency gurus say the price is still headed north.

Y'all don't use your grocery money on any of this stuff, ya hear?

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »


Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

Remember, friends, don't spend your grocery money on this or any investment.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-0 ... ave-higher

Bitcoin Rebounds Back Above $7500 As Goldman Eyes Next Wave Higher

Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Nov 8, 2017 8:32 AM

Bitcoin has roundtripped $1200 from record highs near $7600, down to $6900, and back up to $7500 this morning on the heels of renewed interest in China crypto trading and a technical report from Goldman suggesting $7941 as a short-term target.

Quite a move but back to highs...

Two months ago, when Chinese regulator issued the “Seven Regulatory Bodies” Announcement and shut down the Bitcoin trading, the whole world thought that China Bitcoin gates were closing.



image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

As CoinTelegraph notes though optimists were claiming that Chinese government might free Bitcoin trading under certain circumstances in the future, nobody anticipated that the day is coming this soon.

On Nov. 1, ZB.com, a new cryptocurrency trading platform, began to serve sellers and buyers all over the world, including those in mainland China. ZB.com has become a major trading platform which provides trades of BTC, LTC, ETH, ETC and another major type of cryptocurrencies within a few days.

What’s more, on Nov. 8, it started to accept CNY as a deposit. In other words, the CNY trading market which was closed by the regulators is activated now. The platform only accepts credit cards and debit cards for CNY deposit. WeChat Pay and Alipay are not accepted yet.

Though it’s still too soon to state that Bitcoin trading is freed by the Chinese government, it's highly likely that the government, instead of banning Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is more interested in regulating the market and supervising the trading. Like it or not, a new era of Bitcoin in China is coming, and law and order might play a more significant role now.
Additionally Goldman Sachs technical analysis team signals Bitcoin's next leg is higher to $7941...



It exceeded an equality target from the July low at 6,044. This break indicated potential for an impulsive advance, one that could reach at least 7,941. This is the minimum target for a 3rd of 5-waves up and should therefore be a level from which to watch for signs of a consolidation.

It’s important to emphasize that a stall near 7,941 should be viewed as corrective/counter-trend. A typical 4th wave will often hold ~23.6% of the length of wave 3; which from 7,941 measures out to ~6,767. Given that this is just a 3rd of 5-waves up, the implications are that Bitcoin has potential to run further over time (wave 5 of 5).

View: Next in focus 7,941. Might consolidate there before continuing higher. Consider the pullback corrective against 6,767. Re-assess below 6,042 (38.2%).

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

Blockchain is more important than the price of Bitcoin.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/shipping ... g-alliance

By Joshua Althauser
Shipping Giant UPS Joins Blockchain in Trucking Alliance

3023 Total views 124 Total shares
Shipping Giant UPS Joins Blockchain in Trucking Alliance
Global shipping major UPS was accepted as member of the Blockchain in Trucking Alliance (BiTA) as of early November 2017. BiTA is a Blockchain consortium that is mainly focused on the trucking and shipping industry.

In its announcement, the consortium claimed that UPS will assist in the development of standards around the use of Blockchain in systems used to track or monitor packages, facilitate payments between shipping parties and other industry applications.

According to UPS director of enterprise architecture and innovation, Linda Weakland, there are several possible applications of Blockchain that the company plans to explore when it joined the consortium like improving the efficiency and transparency of shipping transactions.

"The technology has the potential to increase transparency and efficiency among shippers, carriers, brokers, consumers, vendors and other supply chain stakeholders."

Other UPS projects involving Blockchain
Before joining the consortium, UPS has already launched several projects to explore the possible use cases of the technology in its customs brokerage business. The plan of the company is to use the technology to shift away from its largely paper-based processes and establish a more efficient, shared platform that can also be used by its customers and third-party associates.

In supporting the development of standards around Blockchain, UPS claimed that it aim to promote logistics strategies that allow its customers to participate in global trade and finance.

Brief profile of BiTa
BiTa was introduced in August 2017 with a goal to use Blockchain technology in the trucking industry. In his statement then, BiTA cofounder Craig Fuller of TransRisk claimed that the alliance was established to develop standards around Blockchain applications in the sector.

“We formed the Blockchain in Trucking Alliance to develop common standards around Blockchain applications in the trucking industry, from speeding up transactions to securing data transfers. The technology holds great promise, but to encourage its proliferation, we believe that developing industry standards were paramount. PS Logistics brings a depth of industry experience and full-service logistics knowledge to help our industry innovate with integrity through this new technology.”

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

https://hackernoon.com/deepsee-io-the-s ... 3cb95f10c5

Trent LapinskiFollowing
Tech Entrepreneur. Journalist. Technologist. Crypto. Docker. WordPress. http://ReNuCoin.com, http://ShotVentures.com, http://Stratus5.com / http://wpdocker.com
Nov 7
DeepSee.io The Solution to Fake News: The AI Social Aggregation Platform The Internet Needs
The Internet is dying from fake news and propaganda, who will save it?


An AI blockchain content aggregation and distribution platform.

A few months ago I was browsing the propaganda cesspool that is now Reddit and came across a post from someone looking to solve the fake news problem using machine learning, blockchain technology, and artificial intelligence. I messaged them immediately, told them who I was and my experience and arranged a phone call. Turns out I was actually talking directly to the CEO and founder of DeepSee.io, Travis Garland. The next thing you know Travis and I spent the next 3-hours on the phone discussing everything from cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to alien conspiracy theories.

After our call it was clear to me that DeepSee.io needs to exist. Not for my own benefit, or even Travis’s benefit, but because the Internet today has a fake news and propaganda problem built on a mountain of misinformation. If you’re the mainstream media, an established social media celebrity with a large following, or run an established website you can pretty much push whatever propaganda you want online today even if it isn’t true.
Aggregation sites like Reddit used to use a democratic process for sorting content, but they have long since abandoned their values in exchange for clickbait, corporate propaganda, porn, power moderator users, and cute pictures of cats. Reddit now caters to the powers that be, censors content creators, and panders to the masses for the sake of engagement rather than trying to find the truth or the best high value content.

Meanwhile, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google have become corrupted by corporate and political interests as well as foreign investors, and no longer seek the truth. In fact, one of Twitter’s largest investors was a Saudi Prince who was just arrested for corruption, and both Twitter and Facebook are being funded by Russians.

With all that said, evil mega-corporations like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit use tools like machine learning not for the betterment of humanity, but instead to profit off us, distract us, put us in echo chambers, and brainwash the entire planet into believing in their false realities.

DeepSee.io the Solution to Fake News
The concept behind DeepSee.io is to use the same machine learning technology that is being used to brainwash our Facebook news feeds, and instead leverage this technology to promote high value content created by people instead of corporations. The plan is to use blockchain technology, similar to Bitcoin and sites like Steemit to create a transparent ledger for content and moderation. This will create a transparent platform of governance where the truth cannot be hidden. Machine learning algorithms can automatically detect and label propaganda for what it is: fake news.
This way DeepSee can create a content media aggregation platform that will become a beacon of truth rather than a platform for misinformation. Keep in mind, it is because of fake news that half the country was convinced Hillary Clinton was going to win the election, and that pedophiles and sexual abusers didn’t run Hollywood. If a platform like DeepSee.io existed during the 2016 election the people of the World would have had a tool to discover and discuss the truth based on democratic consensus, transparency, and verified against machine learning algorithms.

Not only will a platform like DeepSee combat fake news, but it will also become a platform that helps high value content creators who share valuable truthful information reach an audience. This will create a new distribution platform for content creators allowing them to be in control of their own content, reach larger audiences, and do so transparently without the risk of censorship.

That is why I think DeepSee.io needs to exist. The technology that these major tech companies are using against us is being used for evil, and it is time for a startup like DeepSee.io to come along and disrupt them and use these tools for good. The Internet needs a new platform based on new technologies to help us combat the fake news problem and seek truth. To do so, we need to challenge the existing systems by using the same technologies they’re using, but instead tweak them for truth.

If you oppose censorship, propaganda, fake news, being put in echo chambers, and monetized like cattle perhaps you should check out DeepSee.io which is currently in the process of raising funding to complete development of their platform. Their friends, family, and private token sale begins on November 14th, if you are an investor and are interested.

Travis and his team are hoping to raise money nontraditionally by leveraging an initial coin offering (ICO) instead of relying on the current system and powers that be. This way, his vision and what he and his team create does not become corrupted like everything else we were promised by the tech overlords.

Disclaimer: I have signed on to this project as an adviser because I think this is an awesome startup, haven’t really asked about compensation yet because ultimately I just want to see this exist. If I somehow benefit from this becoming successful in the future, then so be it.

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

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https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin- ... max-keiser

By William Suberg

Bitcoin - New Asset Class ‘First in Hundreds of Years’, Max Keiser
Max Keiser has agreed with CME Group’s Chairman Emeritus Leo Melamed that Bitcoin is a “new asset class.”

Describing as the “first new asset class in hundreds of years,” Keiser’s bullish investment stance on the virtual currency has gained serious weight as CME prepares to launch futures trading this month.

This is why 99% of pundits get it wrong. #Bitcoin is the first new asset class we’ve seen in hundreds of yrs. pic.twitter.com/OTObTN71VW

— Max Keiser (@maxkeiser) November 7, 2017
Melamed had told Reuters that his open stance to technology was obligatory and that Bitcoin represented the need to “examine change.”

“My whole life is built around new technology. I never said no to technology. People who say no to technology are soon dead, I’m still that same guy who believes in at least examining change. That’s what Bitcoin represents.”

CME Group’s decision to interact with Bitcoin came with significant repercussions, prices rising dramatically and many heralding a watershed moment for cryptocurrency’s reputation.

Melamed himself described the move as “a very important step for Bitcoin’s history.”

“We will regulate, make Bitcoin not wild, nor wilder. We’ll tame it into a regular type instrument of trade with rules,” he continued.

His comments come the same week as Goldman Sachs forecasts a further price jump to almost $8,000 for Bitcoin, despite fears of price volatility and network disruption following the SegWit2x hard fork.

“The market has shown evidence of an impulsive rally since breaking above 6,044. Next in focus $7,941. Might consolidate there before continuing higher,” a note to investors read Monday.

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

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See a pattern?
Bitcoin Price.png
Bitcoin Price.png (49.46 KiB) Viewed 999 times
https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-tale ... xpert-blog

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

https://cointelegraph.com/news/former-u ... nvestments

By Joshua Althauser
Former US Presidential Candidate Ron Paul Promotes Bitcoin-based Retirement Investments

Former Republican Congressman and US presidential candidate, Ron Paul, was hired as an endorser of Bitcoin-based retirement instruments. In his endorsement for the cryptocurrency firm, which is a subsidiary of Goldco, Paul touted to Americans the benefits of entrusting their savings to the Bitcoin-based retirement account provider.

In a video that accompanied an article titled “Ron Paul Is Shilling for a Bitcoin Retirement Fund Exactly Where You’d Expect” that was published by Mashable as of mid-November 2017, Paul urged Americans to contact cryptocurrency company to know more about the various investment options that are based on Bitcoin.

Paul also claimed that he is excited about the various options that Bitcoin opens up in the retirement sector.

“As a firm believer in currency competition, I’m excited to see the options that Bitcoin opens up.”

Other companies offering Bitcoin-based retirement account services
Aside from the promoted company, other firms are providing full services for Bitcoin-based retirement accounts. The companies provide assistance to their customers in purchasing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies through their individual retirement accounts (IRA) or 401Ks. These firms claim that digital IRAs allow Americans to invest in virtual currencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin.

“Digital IRAs are unique retirement accounts that allow you to invest in digital currencies (also known as cryptocurrencies) like Bitcoin and Ethereum, in addition to the conventional assets that you utilize already.”

Such solutions are not new. In fact, one company previously shared that has raised over $2 mln within six months of its launch. As millennials tend to shy away from traditional investment options, many investors in their twenties actually prefer to diversify their investments despite the supposed risks.

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

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iWriteStuff
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

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Silver wrote: November 20th, 2017, 10:00 am20Nov2017.JPG
Interesting to see BCH just treading water.... My guess is it's just waiting for Coinbase.com to announce they are going to start selling it. I'm slowly acquiring it, personally.

Hey how about that ETH, eh? Wish I knew someone who was mining it ;)

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BeNotDeceived
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

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https://www.rt.com/business/410028-russia-bitcoin-megacity-siberia/ wrote:
Bitcoin megacity could rise in Russia's Siberia

Russia may soon build a city in Siberia just to mine cryptocurrency. The idea is to provide a new source of income for people and the state, and in the future create a rival to Silicon Valley. The city should be located in Siberia or the Far East, not far from a large hydroelectric power station, according to Russian State Duma member Boris Chernyshov.

Cryptocurrency mining has become popular in Siberia due to the region's low energy costs. The process requires computing power and lots of electricity. Irkutsk has become a hub for cryptocurrency mining because electricity is very cheap, about five times less expensive than in Moscow.
Burning up resources to create a magic string of numbers. :x

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

BeNotDeceived wrote: November 20th, 2017, 10:50 am
https://www.rt.com/business/410028-russia-bitcoin-megacity-siberia/ wrote:
Bitcoin megacity could rise in Russia's Siberia

Russia may soon build a city in Siberia just to mine cryptocurrency. The idea is to provide a new source of income for people and the state, and in the future create a rival to Silicon Valley. The city should be located in Siberia or the Far East, not far from a large hydroelectric power station, according to Russian State Duma member Boris Chernyshov.

Cryptocurrency mining has become popular in Siberia due to the region's low energy costs. The process requires computing power and lots of electricity. Irkutsk has become a hub for cryptocurrency mining because electricity is very cheap, about five times less expensive than in Moscow.
Burning up resources to create a magic string of numbers. :x
Does crude oil come from dead dinosaurs or is it abiotic?

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iWriteStuff
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

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BeNotDeceived wrote: November 20th, 2017, 10:50 am
https://www.rt.com/business/410028-russia-bitcoin-megacity-siberia/ wrote:
Bitcoin megacity could rise in Russia's Siberia

Russia may soon build a city in Siberia just to mine cryptocurrency. The idea is to provide a new source of income for people and the state, and in the future create a rival to Silicon Valley. The city should be located in Siberia or the Far East, not far from a large hydroelectric power station, according to Russian State Duma member Boris Chernyshov.

Cryptocurrency mining has become popular in Siberia due to the region's low energy costs. The process requires computing power and lots of electricity. Irkutsk has become a hub for cryptocurrency mining because electricity is very cheap, about five times less expensive than in Moscow.
Burning up resources to create a magic string of numbers. :x
The Russian government takes crypto currency serious enough to dedicate the resources of an entire city to it and we call it a "magic string of numbers"?

Sure. 'Cause those Russkies are dummies.

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BeNotDeceived
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

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iWriteStuff wrote: November 20th, 2017, 11:38 am
BeNotDeceived wrote: November 20th, 2017, 10:50 am
https://www.rt.com/business/410028-russia-bitcoin-megacity-siberia/ wrote:
Bitcoin megacity could rise in Russia's Siberia

Russia may soon build a city in Siberia just to mine cryptocurrency. The idea is to provide a new source of income for people and the state, and in the future create a rival to Silicon Valley. The city should be located in Siberia or the Far East, not far from a large hydroelectric power station, according to Russian State Duma member Boris Chernyshov.

Cryptocurrency mining has become popular in Siberia due to the region's low energy costs. The process requires computing power and lots of electricity. Irkutsk has become a hub for cryptocurrency mining because electricity is very cheap, about five times less expensive than in Moscow.
Burning up resources to create a magic string of numbers. :x
The Russian government takes crypto currency serious enough to dedicate the resources of an entire city to it and we call it a "magic string of numbers"?

Sure. 'Cause those Russkies are dummies.
Energy is valuable even in Siberia where it’s also very cold making it an ideal place. Let’s drill for oil in the Artic and build an ice empire ro rival Super Man. :P

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

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Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

Jamie Dimon is such a (fill in the blank) .

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-2 ... utures-fee

JPMorgan Capitulates, May Help Clients Trade Bitcoin Futures (For A Fee)

by Tyler Durden
Nov 21, 2017 3:35 PM

On September 12, Jamie Dimon caused a stir (and selloff) within the cryptocurrency community when he lashed out at bitcoin, calling it a "fraud" which is "worse than tulip bulbs, predicting "it won't end well", will "blow up" and "someone is going to get killed." Oh, and just to make it clear, "any JPM trader caught trading bitcoin" would be "fired for being stupid."

After briefly plunging, since then the price of Bitcoin has doubled, and earlier today, Bloomberg quoted money manager David Kotok who said that "clients bring up bitcoin all the time. They think it’s cool. It has the newness, which is attractive to some people, though others would say newness is a risk they don’t want to take." For banks, as Lloyd Blankfein learned over the past month, this means they have a choice: either get with it, and make money on the latest investing craze, or stand aside and make nothing.

And now, none other than JPMorgan is "getting with it", because as the WSJ reports, despite Dimon's guarantee of a pink slip for any trader caught transaction in bitcoin, the bank is now looking at business opportunities in the planned bitcoin-futures market, which the CME has said it will launch by the end of the year. Specifically, J.P. Morgan is considering whether to provide its clients access to CME’s new bitcoin product through its futures-brokerage unit. That, the WSJ reports, means the bank’s customers could use it to trade bitcoin futures while J.P. Morgan collects fees for such services, seemingly in violation of its fiduciary duty considering its CEO just two months ago called the product a "fraud."

Oops.

The reversal is not definitive yet, and the process has involved assessing whether there is demand among J.P. Morgan’s customers for the proposed CME bitcoin contract, according to the WSJ source, although judging by the reverse inquiry, there clearly is.

And where JPM goes, others are sure to follow:

Other banks must also make the call about whether to support CME’s bitcoin futures. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley are among the dozens of firms that offer their customers access to CME’s markets through their futures-brokerage arms.
But, as everyone knows courtesy of repeat media appearances by the outspoken CEO, none of those banks has chief executive who has been as critical of bitcoin as Dimon, who has blasted it as a “fraud” and compared it with past financial bubbles. “If you’re stupid enough to buy it, you will pay the price for it one day,” he told a conference last month.

And now, in delightful irony, JPM is preparing to make money by offering this "fraud" to clients. This, also, just days after JPM was busted for assisting money laundering in Switzerland after accusing bitcoin of being used as a tool for money laundering.

Here, we naturally commisserate with the JPM chief: In a world in which as Mike Novogratz said earlier, retail interest in equities has been waning over the past decade as "investors no longer trust financial institutions", the only alternative to grip the public's trading and investing interest has been the very bitcoin (and other digital currencies) so loathed by establishment commercial and central banks, especially since the "money" is printed not by some central bank, but the universe of users themselves: a lack of control central banks would never willingly cede.

JPM's looming decision about whether to let customers trade bitcoin futures underscores the challenges that Wall Street firms face as the cryptocurrency emerges from the shadowy margins of the financial markets and draws growing investor interest. Meanwhile, CME CEO Terrence Duffy said in a CNBC interview this month he expects trading in bitcoin futures to begin the second week of December. Launching futures would bring the virtual currency a big step closer to the financial mainstream, making it easier for both large financial firms and retail investors to trade it.

Furthermore, as we showed in September, J.P. Morgan already gladly collects commcision for handling client trades of Bitcoin XBT, an ETN trading in Europe and tracking bitcoin. While the bank has said it doesn’t take positions in the note and simply routes customers’ buy and sell orders electronically to exchanges, it wouldn't be the first time JPM has lied about it considers prop trades (see the London Whale).

In any case, brokering trades in bitcoin futures would be similar, as JPM would be happy to collect a spread every time a client buys or sell the "fraud." And once in, JPM will have no choice but - as a matter of ego - to be the biggest. J.P. Morgan is the second-biggest futures broker in the U.S., second only to Goldman, CFTC data show.

And as more and more Wall Street firms scramble to offer the retail public access to bitcoin, last week IB CEO Thomas Peterffy, warned that CME needs to ring-fence its system for clearing bitcoin futures trades from the rest of its markets, or else losses in bitcoin could end up rippling through the broader financial system.

“Unless the risk of clearing cryptocurrency is isolated and segregated from other products, a catastrophe in the cryptocurrency market that destabilizes a clearing organization will destabilize the real economy,” Mr. Peterffy wrote last week in an open letter to the chairman of the CFTC, which he also published in a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal.

Ironically, this legitimate warning appears to have only cemented JPM's resolve to become a bitcoin middleman, and soon, principal. Which brings us to a question we first asked two months ago: "which is it Jamie?"

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BeNotDeceived
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

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Silver wrote: November 20th, 2017, 10:56 am
BeNotDeceived wrote: November 20th, 2017, 10:50 am
https://www.rt.com/business/410028-russia-bitcoin-megacity-siberia/ wrote:
Bitcoin megacity could rise in Russia's Siberia

Russia may soon build a city in Siberia just to mine cryptocurrency. The idea is to provide a new source of income for people and the state, and in the future create a rival to Silicon Valley. The city should be located in Siberia or the Far East, not far from a large hydroelectric power station, according to Russian State Duma member Boris Chernyshov.

Cryptocurrency mining has become popular in Siberia due to the region's low energy costs. The process requires computing power and lots of electricity. Irkutsk has become a hub for cryptocurrency mining because electricity is very cheap, about five times less expensive than in Moscow.
Burning up resources to create a magic string of numbers. :x
Does crude oil come from dead dinosaurs or is it abiotic?
Abiotic = devoid of life; sterile = nope.

Any carbon based life form or excretory material. Mostly dead Plants, Fish, Insects, Microorganisms and Dino-poo. :o

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

BeNotDeceived wrote: November 21st, 2017, 4:31 pm
Silver wrote: November 20th, 2017, 10:56 am
BeNotDeceived wrote: November 20th, 2017, 10:50 am
https://www.rt.com/business/410028-russia-bitcoin-megacity-siberia/ wrote:
Bitcoin megacity could rise in Russia's Siberia

Russia may soon build a city in Siberia just to mine cryptocurrency. The idea is to provide a new source of income for people and the state, and in the future create a rival to Silicon Valley. The city should be located in Siberia or the Far East, not far from a large hydroelectric power station, according to Russian State Duma member Boris Chernyshov.

Cryptocurrency mining has become popular in Siberia due to the region's low energy costs. The process requires computing power and lots of electricity. Irkutsk has become a hub for cryptocurrency mining because electricity is very cheap, about five times less expensive than in Moscow.
Burning up resources to create a magic string of numbers. :x
Does crude oil come from dead dinosaurs or is it abiotic?
Abiotic = devoid of life; sterile = nope.

Any carbon based life form or excretory material. Mostly dead Plants, Fish, Insects, Microorganisms and Dino-poo. :o
The world uses a lot of oil every day. I don't care how many dinosaurs there were, that's a lot of poop to run our era's power plants and internal combustion engines.

Silver
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Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

Princeton, for example, is teaching classes on "Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies."

https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency

About this course: To really understand what is special about Bitcoin, we need to understand how it works at a technical level. We’ll address the important questions about Bitcoin, such as:

How does Bitcoin work? What makes Bitcoin different? How secure are your Bitcoins? How anonymous are Bitcoin users? What determines the price of Bitcoins? Can cryptocurrencies be regulated? What might the future hold?

After this course, you’ll know everything you need to be able to separate fact from fiction when reading claims about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. You’ll have the conceptual foundations you need to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin network. And you’ll be able to integrate ideas from Bitcoin in your own projects.

Course Lecturers: Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University
Taught by: Arvind Narayanan, Assistant Professor, Computer Science

Syllabus
WEEK 1 Introduction to Crypto and Cryptocurrencies
Learn about cryptographic building blocks ("primitives") and reason about their security. Work through how these primitives can be used to construct simple cryptocurrencies.
6 videos

WEEK 2 How Bitcoin Achieves Decentralization
Learn Bitcoin's consensus mechanism and reason about its security. Appreciate how security comes from a combination of technical methods and clever incentive engineering.
5 videos

WEEK 3 Mechanics of Bitcoin
Learn how the individual components of the Bitcoin protocol make the whole system tick: transactions, script, blocks, and the peer-to-peer network.
6 videos

WEEK 4 How to Store and Use Bitcoins
This week we'll explore how using Bitcoins works in practice: different ways of storing Bitcoin keys, security measures, and various types of services that allow you to trade and transact with bitcoins.
7 videos

WEEK 5 Bitcoin Mining
We already know that Bitcoin relies crucially on mining. But who are the miners? How did they get into this? How do they operate? What's the business model like for miners? What impact do they have on the environment?
5 videos

WEEK 6 Bitcoin and Anonymity
Is Bitcoin anonymous? What does that statement even mean—can we define it rigorously? We'll learn about the various ways to improve Bitcoin's anonymity and privacy and learn about Bitcoin's role in Silk Road and other hidden marketplaces.
6 videos

WEEK 7 Community, Politics, and Regulation
We'll look at all the ways that the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technology touches the world of people. We'll discuss the community, politics within Bitcoin and the way that Bitcoin interacts with politics, and law enforcement and regulation issues.
8 videos

WEEK 8 Alternative Mining Puzzles
Not everyone is happy about how Bitcoin mining works: its energy consumption and the fact that it requires specialized hardware are major sticking points. This week we'll look at how mining can be re-designed in alternative cryptocurrencies.
5 videos

WEEK 9 Bitcoin as a Platform
One of the most exciting things about Bitcoin technology is its potential to support applications other than currency. We'll study several of these and study the properties of Bitcoin that makes this possible.
5 videos

WEEK 10 Altcoins and the Cryptocurrency Ecosystem
Hundreds of altcoins, or alternative cryptocurrencies, have been started, either to fix Bitcoin's perceived flaws or to pursue different goals and properties. We'll look at everything that goes into an altcoin and how they interact with Bitcoin.
4 videos

WEEK 11 The Future of Bitcoin?
The use of Bitcoin technology for decentralizing property, markets, and so on has been hailed as a recipe for economic and political disruption. We'll look at the technological underpinnings of these proposals and the potential impact on society.
4 videos

View Full Syllabus

Silver
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 5247

Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

Bitcoin for beginners: 30 videos, none of them longer than 37 minutes.
A collection of videos for newcomers who want to learn about Bitcoin and open blockchains.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 2tzigB9Nnj

Silver
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 5247

Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

Here's a nice chap who presents his argument that Bitcoin is in a bubble.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-2 ... ble-bubble

Bitcoin: An Unknowable Bubble?

by Tyler Durden
Nov 22, 2017 9:10 AM

"Whatever [Bitcoin] is, I missed it... It looks and smells like all the bubbles I have seen throughout history." - billionaire investor Jim Rogers
Authored by Constantin Gurdgiev via True Economics blog,

There is a much-discussed in the crypto-sphere chart making rounds these days, plotting Bitcoin price dynamics against the historical bubbles of the past:



The chart is striking. Albeit simplistic. See Note 1 below for a technical argument on the chart timing.

On price dynamics alone, Bitcoin looks like a sure bubble - a disaster waiting to happen. But Bitcoin dynamics are basically not suited for any empirical analysis of any significant accuracy.

As noted by some commentators, Bitcoin had numerous 80-90% and larger drawdowns in the past (given its immense volatility). It keeps coming back from these. Some claim this to be the evidence that Bitcoin it not a bubble. Which is neither here nor there: bubbles are generated by exuberant expectations of investors, not by actual parameters of price processes. Causality does not flow from dynamics to bubbles, but the other way around. So to identify a bubble, one needs to identify exuberance. See Note 2 below for more on 80% drawdowns.

In the case of Bitcoin fans, there is clearly such.

No investor or serious analyst has been able to provide a fundamentals-based valuation model for Bitcoin.

A disclosure in order here: myself and a graduate student of mine have looked at the fundamental modelling for Bitcoin over the summer. We found no tangible relationship between any economic or financial parameters tested and Bitcoin price dynamics. In another piece of research, myself and two co-authors are currently looking at empirical dynamic and fractal properties of Bitcoin. Again, we finding nothing consistent with a behaviour of an asset with fundamentals-derived valuations.

Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. But, taken together with the general lack of credible fundamentals-linked modelling of the crypto-currency, this means that, at this point in time, Bitcoin price can be potentially driven solely by… err… expectations held by its enthusiasts, plus the incentives by the predominantly China-based investors to avoid extreme risks of capital controls and expropriations. If so, both drivers would make it a speculative bubble.

The only quasi-fundamentals-linked argument for Bitcoin has been the blockchain one - the promise of Bitcoin serving as a key tool for data aggregation, recording and transmission. This argument, however, no longer holds. Blockchain technology has migrated from public blockchains, like Bitcoin, to either open blockchains, like Ethereum or, increasingly more frequently, private blockchains. It is the latter that currently hold the promise to serve as viable platforms for data economy.

As a libertarian, I should like a private currency system that supports anonymity of transactions. As an economist, I should like the innovative nature of Bitcoin. And, put simply, I do. Both.

But as an investor, I do not have the stomach for Bitcoin’s valuations and volatility, as well as for its higher moments behaviour (in particular worrying are kurtosis, co-skews and co-kurtosis, which severely complicate empirical dynamics analysis, see Note 3 below). And I have even less enthusiasm for the crypto market that is sustained increasingly by undertakings, like BitMEX - a purely speculative platform trading some $35 billion in Bitcoin derivatives with leverage up to x100 to the amateur speculators who, put frankly, have zero idea what they are buying and at what price. The vast majority of Bitcoin investors have no clue what a butterfly option looks like and how it can be valued. And the vast majority of financial markets analysts and professionals won’t be able to price a butterfly strategy for Bitcoin, given its painfully twisted moments. Yet, within a month of starting trading, BitMEX reached 1/3 of the market capitalisation of Bitcoin. This is not just a shoe-shine-boy moment, folks. It is white-powder-under-the-nose-and--empty-bottles-of-vodka-on-the-floor hour for high school dropouts with cash to burn.

Another worrying issue with Bitcoin is the argumentation of its main supporters.

This ranges from the cognitively biased “you don’t know anything about the Bitcoin” to “Bitcoin is scarce & limited in supply” to “Bitcoin is a promise of liberating the masses from the oppression of the Central Bankers”.

The first sort of argument exhibits not just Jurassic ignorance of logic, but also a gargantuan dose of arrogance. Repeated sufficiently enough, it signifies the absurd degree of exuberance of investors’ expectations.

The second argument is patently false. Bitcoin has undergone splits, and engendered dozens of other cryptos, with unlimited supply of such into the future. Bitcoin itself is divisible ad infinitum and, with forks, its supply is potentially unlimited. Worse, Bitcoin rests on man-made mathematical foundations. Which means it has no physical bound or constraint. Anything man-made (and even more so, anything mathematically derived) is, by definition, fungible and axiomatic. Just because to-date no one cracked the code to alter Bitcoin mid-stream or drain blockchain-held information does not mean that in the future such a code cannot be written. So hold your horses: gold is physically limited in quantity (even though in the Universe, it is not as scarce as it is on Earth, which makes long term supply constraint on gold potentially non-binding). Bitcoin is limited by our capacity to alter the underlying code defining it. Anyone thinking of an algorithm as a 'law' needs to go back to Godel's mathematics.

Finally, there is an argument of ‘liberation’. Bitcoin value is only sustained as long as it remains convertible into goods, services and other currencies. This means that Bitcoin cannot remain a government- regulation-free asset, as long as its popularity as a medium of exchange and a vehicle for store of value grows. Which means that in the medium terms (3 years or so?), Bitcoin will either cease to be, or cease to be anonymous. All protection from the dictate of the Central Bankers will be gone. Benign tolerance of Bitcoin by some regulators can quickly turn into outright prohibition on trading - as current and past examples of China, Vietnam, Nigeria, Colombia, Taiwan, Ecuador, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan and Bolivia, Russia, and Thailand suggest. Evolution of cybersecurity measures and regulatory and supervisory tools, including their spread into cryptocurrencies domain will only increase effectiveness of such measures into the future. So, unless you are planning to live in a libertarian paradise, where legal norms of other states do not apply, good luck committing much of your wealth to Bitcoin as a safe haven for oppressive or coercive actions of the nation states.

Worse, anyone claiming that Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation fails to understand how modern markets work. Again, to increase in value, Bitcoin requires higher rates of adoption. Higher rates of adoption bring about higher rates of asset instrumentation (see above for BitMIX). Higher rates of instrumentation and adoption, taken together, imply higher holdings of Bitcoin by institutional and diversified portfolio investors. So far so good? Right, now the kicker: these holdings imply greater, not lower, positive correlations between Bitcoin and other asset classes in shock-experiencing markets. That's right, dodos: Goldman holdings of Bitcoin are correlated to liquidity supply in general markets, because if such liquidity starts evaporating, Goldman will sell Bitcoin to plug holes in other instruments. Sell-off in the markets can trigger sell-off in Bitcoin. Now, another kicker: Bitcoin is currently less liquid than any major asset class (see extreme volatility of pricing across various Bitcoin exchanges). Which means that smart folks at Goldman will be dumping Bitcoin before they dump gold and other assets. Hipsters hugging their laptops will be the last to wake up to this momentum (behavioural evidence suggests, they might actually buy into falling Bitcoin in hope of speculatively gaining on a bounce, which, incidentally, can explain why large drawdowns in Bitcoin can turn so fast into upward trends).

The tricky bit about Bitcoin is that its enthusiasts need to learn to live in the real world first. Until they do, Bitcoin will continue its upward path, and this process can go one for quite a while, depending on the supply of cash in the markets for Bitcoin. Once they are taught a sufficient lesson, however, the rest of us will be learning the long term fundamentals valuations of Bitcoin. I, for now, have no idea what these valuations might be.

So Bitcoin, then. A bubble or not?

If you ignore the arguments that attempt to justify its valuations, it looks like one, albeit with dynamics that are very hard to interpret.

If you listen to them, it looks that way even more, with more confidence in the arguments bogus nature.
Draw your own final conclusions.

* * *

Note 1: In defence of the chart above, without validating its implied conclusions: the chart plots Bitcoin evolution from 3 years ago through today. This starting point makes sense. Until mid-2014, Bitcoin was extremely obscure, hype-only investor vehicle, with volatility so off the charts, any analysis of its dynamics was futile (I know, I did such analysis and presented the results in my talk at Bloomberg two years ago). Those us who do research in finance generally and routinely disregard the first 3-4 years of existence of Bitcoin for exactly that reason.

Note 2: A note due here: Bitcoin's returns from 80-90% drawdowns is not a solid evidence of the crypto-currency not being a bubble, because they are in line with Bitcoins' overall massive volatility. In other words, a valid comparative for these drawdowns relative to other asset classes is not "an 80% drawdown in Bitcoin ~ an 80% drawdown in stocks", but "an 80% drawdown in Bitcoin ~ an 8% drawdown in stocks". Apples to apples. Dust to dust.

Note 3: Interesting Elliott Wave analysis of Bitcoin dynamics here and here , although I am not convinced Bitcoin price trends are established enough for this technique to work.

Silver
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 5247

Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

A funny comment follows that article posted above:

Honest Sam Nov 22, 2017 10:27 AM
"There is no reason to own a bitcoin other than for speculation."

Aside from the permanence of corruption in politics, which is completely, entirely, and forever fixed in the genome of the human psyche, outsized in all politicians, the very same thing can be said about everything else, especially 'markets'.

I'd say the same thing about AMZN which sells at 300X EPS.

Speculation is the thing that---- seemingly passionate for each others' eyes only----- lovers engage in and from the end results is a very bad bet even one year out. At 5-10 years out, they have come to court to kill each other.

Committing some fraction of one's assets to BTC with the bet of losing it all likely, the potential upside has rewarded early 2013 adopters with multi-generational wealth.

There are hunnerts of millions if not billions of human beans who are kicking themselves, and beating their heads against concrete walls,into permanent comas for not being one of them.

Silver
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 5247

Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

https://qz.com/1133670/bitcoin-price-at ... he-market/

Bitcoin passed $8,000 as institutional money inches closer to cryptocurrency markets
Copies of bitcoins standing on PC motherboard are seen in this illustration picture, October 26, 2017. Picture taken October 26, 2017.

WRITTEN BY
Joon Ian Wong

Future of Finance
November 20, 2017

Bitcoin’s seemingly unstoppable bull run continued as it passed $8,000 for the first time around 6pm UTC yesterday (Nov. 19). The price has been flirting with $8,000 for days, probably because several signs point to the long promised arrival of institutional money in the cryptocurrency markets.

One indicator is the increasing popularity of bitcoin futures. Over the weekend, the first year-long contract for the price of bitcoin was agreed by traders on the LedgerX platform, an issuer of derivatives regulated in the US. The contract is an option to buy bitcoin at $10,000 by Dec. 28, 2018. According to LedgerX, this carries an implied probability that bitcoin will be above $10,000 on that date. LedgerX has conducted $16 million in bitcoin futures trades since it opened for business on Oct. 20, according to CoinDesk.

Another major futures trading platform will also start testing bitcoin derivatives today. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) will begin letting customers test bitcoin futures today. The exchange plans to let customers trade bitcoin futures for real before the year is up.

Another sign that institutions are getting serious about trading bitcoin is a new service offered by the exchange and wallet provider Coinbase. It launched Coinbase Custody, a storage solution for institutions with at least $10 million in cryptocurrency holdings, last week (Nov. 16). Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong claimed in a blog post announcing the product that there’s over $10 billion in institutional money on the sidelines of the cryptocurrency market, awaiting custodial and other solutions, although he didn’t provide a source for this estimate.

The eye-popping returns on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are difficult for any fund manager to ignore. Their entry to the still young cryptocurrency markets could drive the price of bitcoin and its ilk higher still.

Silver
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 5247

Re: Who knows about Bitcoin?

Post by Silver »

Are you still ignoring Bitcoin? The price for one rose to $9400 earlier today. Current price $9320.

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