Tag: bitcoin

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What is Blockchain or Blockchain Technology?
2 min read
- The blockchain is the mathematical structure for storing data in a way that is nearly impossible to fake.
- Blockchain technology is an important element of cryptocurrencies. Without it, digital currencies like Bitcoin would not exist.
If you are new to blockchain technology or you are already a trader, this article is for you. So, what is the blockchain? The blockchain is an absolutely brilliant invention. The idea of a person or group of people known by the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. By the time, it has developed into something greater, but still, there is a question: What is Blockchain?

Every day you can hear about Blockchain technology, Bitcoin, ICO, Ethereum. But do you understand what blockchain is?

How does it work? Can blockchain be used in business? Will blockchain change the world? This article is aimed to answer all these questions.

What blockchain is, the best explanation is through the game.

Imagine you and your friends are on a vacation. Its night, you are sitting around the pit-fire and playing storytelling. One has begun the story with a sentence, you are repeating the sentence and adding up your part, then the other player, etc. The main goal is the chain of sentences which are producing a story. If someone is not able to repeat and add his own sentence, the chain will fall down, it would end. New sentences are nothing without the initiation of old sentences. That exactly what the blockchain is. You added a sentence on your friend sentence, that was a ‘block’. Everyone approved your phrase because it referred to the old sentences, that is a shared ledger.

From the beginning

Common people started mistrusting the banks. There lies the birth of blockchain. A mysterious person named Satoshi Nakamoto created a whole new currency. He built the whole system on the principle of decentralization. He created a public ledger, which is synchronizing continuously and everyone is able to witness the process.

“I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.”

These are the words of Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, in a message sent to a cryptography-focused mailing list in October 2008. Included was a link to a nine-page white paper describing a technology that some are now convinced will disrupt the financial system.

Transform this into real life.

Let me ask you something. What happens when you send money from your bank account to someone else’s bank account? Your bank acts as a middleman, it verifies and approves the details of sender and receiver through its ledger (a book or other collection of financial accounts. In this case, you must trust your bank to have such transaction. Imagine, when banks are collapsing, will you send your money through banks? Will you be able to trust the middleman?

How does Blockchain work?

Suppose, you want to transfer some money to your friend in the other country. You will initiate a transaction, each online transaction will be a reference to ‘Block’. Because it is a public ledger, there will be broadcast to everyone in the network about the block. Constant synchronization of the ledger will be going on. If the people in the network would approve the transaction, then the ‘block’ would be added to the ‘chain’ which is a transparent record of transactions. Hence the name ‘blockchain’. This is how the money would be transferred. Satoshi Nakamoto carefully designed it to prevent the double spending of money.

What does it mean?

This problem exclusively belongs to digital currency. We can copy songs and movies from our laptops and paste them in other devices. That file will carry information. And can be copied and reproduced regarding our digital transaction. This will generate new fake currency, which is not part of our original monetary system. We can call it double spending of money.

Satoshi Nakamoto handled this problem extremely well. He introduced public ledger and an immutable chain of blocks. Every transaction is bundled into a block, every block is processed, authenticated, time-stamped and linked to the previous block.

This creates an immutable chain

When you want to send some money from your bank account, your bank will verify and confirm the transaction. Problem is that you have only one confirmation in the banking system. But, in the blockchain, at least 6 confirmations are required for a block to be added to the chain. Contrary, it is rejected. Can you see how blockchain is more secure and transparent?

Why use blockchain?

Transparency is one of the reasons why should use this technology. It is about its open source structure. It means that other users of the network can read and confirm or not confirm the information. The essential thing of being open source is that it can’t save logged data without majority blockchain network users.

Decentralization is other. Next main blockchain reason is the lack of a central data hub. Instead of running a massive data center you save your information in decentralized net, where any user can read, check and authorize any of your actions.

User controlled networks are also advantaged, a consequence of the decentralization of the network. Instead of holding a third party for data processing, stakeholders decided to control each other and decide what to do next. For instance, the inability to achieve 80% consensus on the update, tied to the bitcoin block, lies in the fact that it was necessary to develop a plug into two separate currencies, bitcoin, and bitcoin cash.

Faster transaction settlements is another advantage. Blockchain technology works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That means the blockchain based transaction process is faster.

When you send the transaction to traditional banks, it will take days to be completely settled. This is due to protocols in bank transferring software, and working time. You also have financial institutions located in various time zones, which delays processing times, but it’s not about blockchain.

Reduced transaction costs are characteristic. Blockchain allows you to execute transactions without a third party, which is often a bank or a central server. Since the intermediary is absent, this allows you to get rid of imposing expense items.

Where to use the blockchain

There are a lot of uses of blockchain technology. Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies is just one application of blockchain. We have Ethereum, which is a platform where different applications can be built, it is more like an Operating System. And other altcoins too, are based on the blockchain. And many other fields. The blockchain is not only about cryptocurrencies.

In healthcare, the use of digital signatures based on blockchain data allows access only with the permission of several people and full compliance with keys, also allows to regulate the availability and maintain the confidentiality of medical records.

As a protection, the blockchain technology is creating an impregnable network with the impossibility to get access from the outside. The blockchain technology can improve transparency, speed up work and check corruption in governments all around the world. Probably one of the most popular uses of blockchain technology in the modern world is energy. In order to maximize the rational use of the generated energy, blockchain technology provides to see how much energy we use, at what hours, etc. There are lots of opportunities with blockchain technology and its immeasurable potential for improving the quality of service provision improving the confidentiality and integrity of data at the same time.

Bottom line:

So, what is blockchain? Maybe the best answer is this quotation: ‘The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.’ said Don & Alex Tapscott, authors Blockchain Revolution (2016).

The blockchain technology is extremely powerful and can disrupt many existing organizations. No matter what happens with Bitcoin, Blockchain technology is here to stay, in a more refined and sophisticated manner.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)
23rd October 2018
BITCOIN MINING EXPLAINED: HOW IT WORKS, HOW MUCH ENERGY IT USES AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE FIXED

The cryptocurrency has staged a meteoric rise in 2017 that has attracted new investors, but, for many, question marks still surround bitcoin and the technology behind it. With recent reports pointing to the high energy cost associated with mining, the process used to create bitcoin, is there any way to fix it? Here are all your questions answered.

WHAT IS BITCOIN MINING?

Just as gold miners produce the world’s supply of gold, so do bitcoin miners produce all the digital currency available to the market – but, naturally, it is a bit more complicated than that. Mining is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin’s public ledger, or the blockchain.

HOW DOES MINING PHYSICALLY WORK?

First of all, the blockchain is, simply, a chain of blocks. Miners use special software to solve mathematical problems that both confirm legitimate transactions or blocks and create new bitcoins, adding new transactions to the blockchain about every 10 minutes. The hash rate is the number of calculations a piece of hardware can make every second as it works to solve that math problem, and the higher the hash rate, the more likely a miner is to solve a transaction and thus be rewarded with a set amount of bitcoin.

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT?

The difficulty of mining bitcoin is part of its design. The ideal average mining time is 10 minutes per block, and if that falls, the process becomes more difficult with the aim of keeping the block creation rate stable. There are a total of 21m bitcoins that can be mined, at which point the miners will close shop unless bitcoin’s protocol – the rules that secure the system – is changed to allow for a larger supply.

IS IT PROFITABLE?

Mining can be profitable, as miners are rewarded with a fixed amount of coins and transaction fees for their hard work, but the computers and hardware necessary for powering through blocks can eat up a lot of electricity and end up running huge costs.

HOW MUCH ENERGY IS USED AND WHAT IS THE COST?

The massive computer network behind bitcoin uses quite a bit of energy – as much as Serbia, to be exact.

A recent report by Accounts & Legal said the aggregate computing power of the bitcoin network is nearly 100,000 times larger than the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers combined, and miners are constantly installing upgrades to make their computers faster.

Digiconomist has created a bitcoin energy consumption index in order to understand how much electricity is consumed by the cryptocurrency. As of 5 December, bitcoin’s estimated annual electricity consumption was 31.96 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 0.14 percent of the world’s total electricity consumption. That’s about the same as Serbia and more than Morocco, Oman, and the Slovak Republic. Annualized estimated global mining costs were $1.6bn (£1.2bn), while annualized global mining revenues were $10.2bn. The index says 250-kilowatt hours (KWh) of electricity are consumed per transaction.

WHAT’S THE NEXT BIG CHALLENGE FOR BITCOIN?

Greenspan said working out how to scale the network is next on the agenda. “Energy consumption is only a small part of that. If bitcoin is to replace cash, in the long run, it will need to be fitted to process more than 100,000 transactions per second. At the moment it can do about 10. Many proposals are on the table but as the currency is decentralized it’s difficult to get everybody to agree on one,” he said.

Read more HERE

This article was originally posted on markemlickprivateequity.com/

22nd October 2018
Should You Leave Crypto, Get into Cannabis and ‘ Buy high’?

This topic is a small semantic game with words. But it seems to be a serious business.

By Guy Avtalyon

I want to be a clear, cannabis business is serious business.

Marijuana is a commodity, and commodities markets are subject to boom and bust, amazing and caught.

Canadian marijuana company Aurora Cannabis Inc.’s shares rose about 4% Thursday, October 18, after it said shares have been approved for trading on the New York Stock Exchange starting October 23. Even earlier, the hype around cannabis stocks was catching up to the crypto craze.

There’s a huge new trend that is sweeping the investment world. The rise in the legalization of marijuana caused the development of a new investment opportunity. Cannabis Shares, for example, allows investors to buy shares in many legal cannabis-based projects, including the sale of cannabis itself, or products of cannabis.

Merida Captial Partners, a New York investment firm, said its cannabis fund had been approached by around 50 cryptocurrency investors. “They are looking at cannabis and crypto as an emerging sector,” said Merida managing partner Mitch Baruchowitz, “they might not be connected as industries but they are seen as outside the traditional investment field. High risk and high reward.”

On the market, the stock ACB ( Aurora Cannabis Inc.), +1.40% ACB, +1.40%, will trade under the ticker symbol “ACB”. The shares are also traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. This news came one day after Canada fully legalized cannabis for adult recreational use, the first G-7 country to do so, and only the second in the world to do so after Uruguay.

Canada changes the world following the passage of the Cannabis Act on June 19.

Which country first legalize recreational marijuana?

Canada became the first industrialized country in the world to legalize recreational marijuana.

In the process, it opens the door to possibly $5 billion in added annual sales. This industry is already generating from domestic medical weed and exports to foreign countries where medicinal cannabis has been given the green light.

Finance barons like to turn any commodity into an investment opportunity. This move was inevitable with the international changes in cannabis legislation. But, many are willing to see similarities between cannabis shares and cryptocurrencies. And they starting to worry that the cannabis industry could wipe out the need for crypto-investment.

Within the stock market, no asset class has been hotter than pot stocks over the past few years. Many of the largest marijuana stocks by market cap have doubled or tripled in value over the past year, and are up by more than 1,000% over the trailing two-year period.

Why cannabis stocks are so interesting?

The fundamental lure of marijuana stocks is its impressive sales growth potential. ArcView, a leading cannabis research firm, suggests that North American legal weed sales could grow by 28% between 2018 and 2021. That would lead to almost $25 billion in annual legal cannabis sales.

And the public all over the world is in favor of marijuana legalization. All major marijuana polls demonstrate strong favorability toward legalization.

All six-pot stocks have enjoyed outsized gains in the last few months as Canada legalization appears. These pot stocks generate quarterly and annual profit: Aurora Cannabis Inc. ACB, +1.40% , Cronos Group Inc. CRON, +0.66% was up 3.8%, Canopy Growth Corp. CGC, -3.51% WEED, -2.77% was up 2.1% and Tilray Inc. TLRY, +2.89% was up 3.2%. GW Pharmaceuticals Plc GWPH, -1.30% was down 0.7% and Aphria Health Inc. APH, +0.26% was up about 2%.

Why people love cannabis stocks?

Tilray is a Canadian cannabis firm, one that announced in September that they traded around $6.5 billion worth of shares on United States exchanges, at the same period Amazon, traded around $7.6 billion on the same exchanges. Amazon has a stock 47 times the size of Tilray, therefore, we can truly appreciate the full scale of this as an investment opportunity.

Some skepticists are suggesting that the crypto craze is coming to an end, but we know that this isn’t the case. Markets are stagnant because of a transition period. Frankly, they should know that the crypto craze hasn’t yet begun. Cannabis shares are more like traditional commodities and traditional stocks, therefore they are more attractive to a high level and institutional investors. Because institutions are investing in them, the level of cash flowing into Cannabis shares is such. Cryptocurrency has not yet penetrated the mainstream and therefore, there can’t be a threat from Cannabis Shares.

Investment advice website. Proactive Investors has started a dedicated Telegram channel for investors interested in cryptocurrency, the blockchain, and cannabis. The SEC stated: “Fraudsters may try to use media coverage about the legalization of marijuana to promote an investment scam.”

On the social messaging app Telegram, some cryptocurrency forums, where users trade investing tips and advice on the anonymous network, have now turned their attention to shares in cannabis growers.

Cannabis Stocks vs Bitcoin

Why should anybody go to think that individual and personal Cannabis Shares investors, couldn’t also invest in cryptocurrencies as both are new and exciting ventures? Overall, it’s not fair to compare the two. They aren’t a threat to each other. A lot of investments can exist side by side. Because Cannabis Shares are big and popular for many reasons, it doesn’t mean people will stop investing in Bitcoin. Yes, their attention may be rerouted, but this will constantly change.

“Crypto traders I know are getting into pot stocks,” Jeffrey Van de Leemput, founder of investing-education platform Cryptocampus, said in a message, reported Bloomberg. “But I don’t know if that’s a pattern or just coincidence.”

Who’s been behind the buying of pot stocks? I have a hunch that its investors tend to be young. It’s the millennials.
There is the potential for marijuana to be traded as a commodity, similar to how corn and other agricultural products are now bought and sold, or as asset-based security, similar to the way mortgages have long been bundled and sold to investors. Who knows, the cannabis futures market might be the largest futures market in the world.

But Bitcoin has no plan to become mainstream on the market, it isn’t in its nature.

Going in bitcoin’s favor, retail investors predominantly control the show. The most bitcoin trading occurs on decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges, and institutional investors usually want nothing to do with these decentralized exchanges, bitcoin is driven by the emotions of retail investors, rather than by fundamental reason. And emotions can be the most powerful tool in pushing Bitcoin’s valuations higher.

Which investment should you buy with your last $50? Cryptocurrency or marijuana stock? Both of these investment opportunities are like a plane, they are getting everyone on board and they are ready to fly with or without you.

19th October 2018
Bitcoin experienced a distinct decline in its volatility!

1 min read

Bitcoin experienced a distinct decline in its volatility during a period in which the volume of the largest cryptocurrency achieved a new yearly low. The volume of Bitcoin dropped from $4.2 billion to $3.2 billion on October 7, by more than 23 percent. Since then, the volume of BTC has recovered substantially, back to $4.2 billion, but it still remains substantially lower than previous weeks. The overall decline in trading activity in the cryptocurrency exchange market due to the uncertainty in the short-term price trend of Bitcoin is said Bitcoin experienced a decline in volatility.

Mike McGlone, a commodity strategist, stated that as the cryptocurrency market matures, the rate of Bitcoin volatility will continue to rapidly decline. He explained that an emerging asset class often sees a large discrepancy in its daily price movements and volatility in volume until it finds strong infrastructure to support and solidify its market.

“This is a maturing market, so volatility should continue to decline. When you have a new market, it will be highly volatile until it establishes itself. There are more participants, more derivatives, more ways of trading, hedging, and arbitraging.”

Since August 9, the price of Bitcoin has remained relatively stable in the range between $6,400 and $6,800. In the middle of September, BTC surpassed the $7,000 mark, but the asset has shown no signs of solid momentum, mostly due to the lack of volume in the cryptocurrency exchange market. After that, on October 6, the cryptocurrency exchange market recorded its lowest daily volume in over 12 months. That occasion made traders be concerned regarding the short-term trend of the market.

Stability of bitcoin

The stability of BTC allowed investors in the market to initiate an accumulation phase in a low price range, enabling more investors to enter the market and acquire BTC. That’s why is so important for Bitcoin to experience a decline in volatility.

The eminent venture capital investor Garry Tan, said, a low price range helps investors enter a new market or an asset class with significantly less risk:

“The crypto winter generally makes it safer for super-long-term oriented Yale-model institutions to enter at a price that isn’t dangerous. You know what is scary? Investing and then immediately seeing an 80% drop. That is hard to recover from.”

It is surprising that the cryptocurrency market is not reacting to many of the positive developments that have emerged in the sector over the past few months.

The Reaction of the market

It is possible, that the market will begin to respond to most of the progress that has been made in the sector over the last three months. Bitcoin has not shown a high level of stability in a long period of time. Considering that Bitcoin has recovered beyond its previous high point, it is more likely for it to move to the upside.

Many analysts and traders in the cryptocurrency market stated that extended periods of stability and consolidation often lead to a strong upside movement.

Generally speaking, when you’re analyzing charts, higher highs and higher lows are the indicators of a positive move up. Lower highs are not pointed where you can expect a rally. However, we are speaking about Bitcoin and it is so unpredictable.

Investor Mike Novogratz has emphasized $6,800 as a major resistance level for Bitcoin throughout the past month, and if it comfortably surpasses that level, then it will be able to eye resistance levels in span $7,000 and $8,000.

If Bitcoin breaks out of the $6,800 mark relatively quickly, Novogratz said it is possible for Bitcoin to demonstrate a 30 percent increase in price by the end of the year.

The question is if this the right time to start accumulating Bitcoin?

On the end of August, when the price of BTC was around $6,600, we all can read expert’s statements that the bear market is not over yet but it is a viable period for new investors in the space to start accumulating Bitcoin.

Following that opinion, it is highly unlikely for Bitcoin to decline far below its current price range and we may conclude that it is an appropriate time to start accumulating BTC.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

17th October 2018
Ways to Earn Bitcoin

2 min read

After Bitcoin become one of the hottest new investment assets it has surprised many who once believed the blockchain-driven cryptocurrency would never have real-world value. It has also produced huge interest. This interest, as the nature of this digital currency as well, cause great opportunities for making extra money.

Traders Paradise wants to present you several ways how to make money with Bitcoin and several different ways to earn Bitcoin.

How to earn bitcoin?

There is a huge amount of money to be made in this market, and many of the ways of earning with Bitcoin may result in small amounts. It shouldn’t dishearten you. Even small amounts of Bitcoin can be useful assets.

How?

The rapid growth of the value of the cryptocurrency gives possibility. If you want to accumulate larger sums of Bitcoin, that’s also entirely possible. It requires some initial investment of course.

Let’s begin exploring the different ways in which you can start making money and earn Bitcoin.

Selling Bitcoin-related products

It is the fact that there are ways to make money from Bitcoin without actually owning any. For instance, you can sell products and services and be paid in Bitcoin.

The easiest way to get into being an affiliate marketer for Bitcoin products is to promote Bitcoin mining devices through some affiliate program. Point is that you can send visitors from your website and receive a small commission on any products they buy there. For that, you’ll need a website on which to post your affiliate links. The good news is that, since Bitcoin miners are generally priced at $100+, you don’t need to sell too many of them to start making some decent money from your marketing efforts.

The same concept can also be applied to Bitcoin services. Many services surrounding Bitcoin offer generous commissions to marketers who refer customers to them. If you’re going to create a website, integrating promotions for services can be helpful to your readers and profitable to you. This is one way to earn bitcoin.

Do freelance jobs and get paid and earn Bitcoin

A huge online marketplace for freelance services exists to connect freelance workers with customers. A new twist has come in the form sites that send payments to freelancers in Bitcoin. If you are freelancer already or have a skill that businesses would be willing to pay you for, you may be able to render services in exchange for fairly significant amounts of Bitcoin.

Freelancing in exchange for Bitcoin has two advantages: first, unlike mining or investing, there is little or no initial cost for most forms of freelance work and the second, some freelance jobs can pay amounts of Bitcoin worth dozens or even hundreds of dollars. If you want to earn Bitcoin at a reasonably fast rate without investing a large amount of money at the outset, freelancing can be your best option.

You’ll just need to sign up for a freelance marketplace that pays in Bitcoin.

Invest in Bitcoin and Bitcoin derivatives

Investing in Bitcoin, indeed still not as common as investing in stocks and bonds, but is fast moving into the financial mainstream. To be honest, investment is one of the profitable ways of making money with Bitcoin.

Basic Bitcoin investment is the simple buying and holding Bitcoin until its price goes up enough to gain a profit. Bitcoin has produced some incredible gains for investors in past years. If you had invested just $200 into Bitcoin when it was worth $1 in early 2011, your investment would be worth millions today. This is an ultra example, which demonstrates how profitable Bitcoin investment has been for some traders who have been willing to hold their investments for long periods of time.

High-risk investment

In the past Bitcoin exchange was easy to hack, like Mt. Gox exchange which was hacked 2014. But now the new generation of more secure exchanges come onto the market to supply Bitcoin services.

A less known way of investing in Bitcoin is to trade it as a CFD, or contract for difference. In core, a CFD is a derivative instrument that is based on the price of an asset, in the case of Bitcoin.

Unlike standard investment, however, CFDs don’t involve actually buying the asset they mirror. Instead, traders open positions on the movement of an asset’s price with a CFD broker. CFDs typically have high leverage rates. Meaning that both gains and losses are higher than they would be in a more traditional investment environment.

Used properly, Bitcoin CFDs can be fairly profitable. If you’re too careless with them, they can be high-risk investments. It depends on your personal level of risk tolerance.

Bitcoin mining

Mining refers to the use of computer hardware to automatically perform a set of mathematical operations. That, in turn, creates new Bitcoin. Bitcoin is set up that only 21 million can ever be produced. At this moment, more than four million are on the table for Bitcoin miners.

You have to know one important fact about Bitcoin mining before getting into the difficulty increases over time, which means, it will take more time and more computing power to generate each following Bitcoin.

At the beginning of Bitcoin, cryptocurrency enthusiasts were able to use graphics processing units on regular computers for mining. But nowadays the difficulty has gone up so much that much more specialized equipment is needed.

To start Bitcoin mining, you’ll need to invest in external devices called a Bitcoin miner. That provides the necessary computing power to produce Bitcoin. The price of a Bitcoin miner will vary based on its processing ability.

Small USB miners start at under $100, while larger, more powerful mining devices can cost thousands of dollars. Although the initial investment of buying a Bitcoin miner can be fairly large, it allows you to produce your own permanent flow of new Bitcoin until the full 21 million has been reached.

Start mining

If you decide to start mining yourself, you will have the peripheral costs too, like electricity costs, for example. If you have a large miner that produces a large amount of heat, you may have to install a cooling system.

These costs can eat up much of the profit margin in Bitcoin mining. Fortunately, if Bitcoin continues to grow in value, these costs will be compensated later.

But there is another way you can get in on the action. It is known as contract mining. In contract mining, you’ll pay a fee in exchange for a company to employ its Bitcoin mining equipment on your behalf. This contract will last for some period of time. And all Bitcoin mined during that time on the equipment you’ve contracted will be sent to your Bitcoin wallet. Contract mining is an easy and passive way for you to accumulate Bitcoin. But it will cost more over the long period than having your own Bitcoin mining equipment.

What else you can do to earn Bitcoin?

For example, you can do micro-tasks small, simple actions, such as viewing an advertisement or engaging with a post on social media. Though the pay is usually very low, micro-tasks are the simplest way to get into Bitcoin.

Bitcoin faucets are a bit like micro-tasks in the sense that they pay very small amounts of Bitcoin in exchange for a small amount of your time – often around 1 Satoshi, which is a hundredth of a millionth BTC. In the case of faucets, though, Bitcoin is usually available to be claimed by users at a set interval, such as every five minutes.

Or you can create content to be monetized with Bitcoin-based ads. Maybe you can lend out the Bitcoin you already have and generate passive income. But if you have respectable knowledge you can make a decent amount of money form helping other people learn about cryptocurrencies.

Bottom line

The easiest and fastest way to have Bitcoin is to buy instantly with a credit card or debit card. You can acquire $50 or less for Bitcoin, fast and usually within 10 minutes. However, you may be new to the entire cryptocurrency concept and for that we recommend you learn these few things above.

Bitcoin is extremely empowering but also different than the currency you know and use every day.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

17th October 2018
Why now Bitcoin (end of 2018, after major drops)?

The simplest answer is why not, but here is a more complex one.

By Guy Avtalyon

Why now Bitcoin? Honestly, I did not meet statistics and exact figures on this topic. But in 2017 the number of searches in the Google search engine on the topic bitcoin – increased by 450%, compared with the previous year.

The last time such a large survey was conducted in the USA, back in 2013 by the firm On Device in preparation for a London conference. At that time bitcoin awareness by Americans was about 25%.

By 2018 bitcoin awareness has jumped by more than twice that number according to Survey Monkey and Global Blockchain Business Council. And though bitcoin acknowledgment is growing, actual participation seems somewhat low.

Nearly six in ten respondents revealed they’d at heard of bitcoin. That up some 33 points from 2013’s measure. The two surveys are not linked. More than 5,000 people participated in the current questionnaire.

More about survey

According to the same survey, only 5% hold a digital asset. But 21 percent of that number claim to be “considering adding it to their portfolios.” The majority of holders are male, under 34 years of age (58%), white.

The results basically show ten percent of millennials own bitcoin while older Americans barely break one percent. Bitcoin holders’ politics are politically independent by half. Less than 20% trust their government more than the Bitcoin network (almost a quarter).

That’s the reason why now bitcoin!

Asked about possible 2018 asset crashes, 38 percent of all Americans (and 41% of owners) see BTC as a bubble poised to pop this year. Still, the survey did note that almost 70 percent expect BTC to increase in value over the coming half of a decade.

A little more than 10 percent believe it will die out.

According to data compiled by Bitinfocharts.com, there are almost 22 million bitcoin wallets. However, most bitcoin users have several BTC wallets and use multiple wallet addresses to increase their financial privacy when transacting in bitcoin. Therefore, the number of bitcoin users is likely less than 22 million.

Anonymity

A 2017 study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance suggests that the “current number of unique active users of cryptocurrency wallets is estimated to be between 2.9 and 5.8 million.”

It is important to note that this study focuses on active users as opposed to bitcoin holders or ‘hodlers’. This gives us insight into how many individuals are actual users as opposed to buy-and-hold investors.

This surveys also show that the end of 2018 is the right time is the time to get to know BTC. So, let start!

What is Bitcoin?

For the majority, it is still an open question. The first step to understanding Bitcoin is admitting you don’t understand Bitcoin.

Let’s say, Bitcoin is a protocol. But, honestly, the protocol itself is just our best try to describe what BTC actually is. No one can be sure of the protocol’s final form.

Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009 by a mysterious figure using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. You can use it to buy or sell from people and companies that accept bitcoin as payment. But it differs in several key ways from traditional currencies.

Most obviously, bitcoin doesn’t exist as a physical currency. There are no actual coins or notes. It exists only online.

Interesting explanations about what Bitcoin:

Mental construct – Because value is subjective and we feel value for Bitcoin units.
Social construct – people feel value for Bitcoin units. And they become an intermediate commodity suitable for exchange, accounting, and store of value.
Legal construct – As an intermediate commodity it serves to cancel formal agreements such as debts, purchases, and pay taxes.
Economic construct – As it may be used to cancel debts and pay taxes it may be used as money facilitating commerce between untrusting strangers in different incompatible jurisdictions.
Technical construct – It is just software that enables a network. But that network organically emerges as a useful system or technical tool for the other constructs.

More…

Protocol construct – The technical system is actually the system of rules imagined and designed to maintain a highly secure Nash Equilibrium between node operators and users.
Mechanical construct – Although many see Bitcoin as a social construct only, it is as much of an objective mechanical system as it is subjective. Although people design and run it, it is immutable, just like the laws of physics in nature.
Physical construct – Bitcoin is designed to mimic gold in nature, but in a computer system and transferable thru communication channels. This is why we call it “digital commodity”.
Natural construct – All of the above emerge from nature. They are not imaginary or magical things, they are as natural as energy, matter, or living organisms.

We can play with semantics here, you can say that it’s a protocol. And also the open-source project that implements the software needed to fit the protocol. Or you can try to call Bitcoin as a kid in the adults’ world.

Bitcoin has no central bank and isn’t linked to or regulated by any state. The supply of the cryptocurrency is decentralized. And can only be increased by a process known as “mining”. For each BTC transaction, a computer owned by a bitcoin “miner” must solve a difficult mathematical problem.

The miner then receives a fraction of a bitcoin as a reward. At present, the mining power of Bitcoin’s network is 300 times more powerful than the world’s top 5 supercomputers combined

Anonymity matters

A record of each transaction, using anonymized strings of numbers to identify it, is stored on a huge public ledger – blockchain. This is necessary to ensure the integrity of the currency.

For most people, it is strange that bitcoin doesn’t exist as a physical currency. There are no actual coins or notes. It exists only online. And it is hard for the majority to imagine such a thing.

But can you imagine the internet?

We all use the internet in every segment of our lives but we can’t point out the finger and say “Here! This is the internet!”

Or how some understand the universe is infinite and how they understand the meaning of infinite, you would be surprised by the answers.

Do you exactly know how your mobile device works? Maybe some of you, but the majority don’t.

Frankly, for me is a total mystery how my dishwasher works but it will not stop me to use it.

“Writing a description for this thing for general audiences is bloody hard. There’s nothing to relate it to.” wrote Satoshi, July 5, 2010.

Fiat money is managed by a central bank, which manages the money supply to keep prices steady. They can print more money or withdraw some from circulation. Yes, if they think it’s needed, as well as using other monetary policy controls such as adjusting interest rates.

My teachers taught me how interest was compounded. The reasons may not be so clear. If we would learn banking history and monetary theory in schools, no one would use the fiat system. It is so obvious.

On the other hand, BTC is a lot simpler than the fiat system. And people are legally compelled to adopt fiat.

The people teaching youngsters these days have grown up under Keynesian economic theory. Also called Keynesianism. So, they strongly believe that money is defined as money only if you can touch it, smell it or hear the sound of counting money.

Number of users

The most popular BTC wallet and exchange provider, Coinbase, reportedly has over 13 million users. This would suggest that the number of bitcoin users is between 13 million and 22 million.

We can assume that the number of bitcoin users outside of the 32 countries that Coinbase services, will be several million. But this data doesn’t include major bitcoin economies in Asia.

So we can conclude that around 20 million bitcoin users globally can be considered as a fair estimate.

Why use bitcoin?

With Bitcoin people get the liberty to exchange value. Without intermediaries which translate to greater control of funds and lower fees. It’s faster, cheaper, more secure, and immutable.

The banks control the cash while bitcoin has owners.

Bitcoin is very useful as a service for fast remittances for an international system of payments, for example. It can help us do online shopping. It’s like an e-wallet which makes blockchain technology to store, track, and spend digital money.

BTC has a global acceptance and is less volatile than cash / local currency.

Due to this feature, it becomes easier to conduct transactions across boundaries and online. You can use this crypto all over the world without going through a conversion process. It is par with Gold and combines the best of cash and gold.

By providing an open market and no restrictions imposed by banks or governments. Bitcoin is peer-to-peer and open, but secure.

Bitcoin is making the biggest revolution in the finance industry in the last 200 years. Leading all cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is at the forefront of the bleeding edge of blockchain innovation. I think it is necessary to stay patient and witness history first hand.

Nothing can stop that!

16th October 2018
Why Bitcoin Has Jumped?

1 min read

On Monday morning Bitcoin has jumped almost 10%. The world’s largest cryptocurrency is back above $6,500. Last week, Bitcoin value seemed to be heading below psychological, $6,000 mark.

According to CoinDesk data Bitcoin jumped from $6,222 earlier today, October 15, to early highs of $6,732, adding almost $10 billion to bitcoin’s market capitalization in a few minutes. On some exchanges, the bitcoin price went up to over $7,200.

According to the same source, the sudden rise in the bitcoin price this morning was signaled by a sell-off of the dollar-linked tether digital coin, the only cryptocurrency which was down today. Bitcoin jumped to $7,200 on Bitfinex, Kraken, Binance, and OKEx, which are all platforms that support USDT. At the same time, Bitcoin moved above $6,700 on non-tether-enabled platforms.

To understand the nature of Bitcoin READ THIS: MONETIZING BITCOIN – THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND BITCOIN AND ITS USES

How are they related?

Traders sell tether to buy other cryptocurrencies and a flood of tether sellers pushed down the tether price and boost the bitcoin price if traders are moving their money in that direction. The tether was down by some 3%.

Tether’s tokens are designed for stability and its price is usually close to the U.S. dollar price because Tether Limited, the company that issues the tokens, says each one is backed by a dollar in its bank accounts. But this proclamation is not independently verified.

Allegedly, tether’s tokens are designed for stability and its price is usually close to the U.S. dollar price because Tether Limited, the company that issues the tokens, says each one is backed by a dollar in its bank accounts. But this proclamation is not independently verified.

According to CoinMarketCap, the tether is the second most traded digital currencies after bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s price jump pushed up the other cryptocurrencies on the market. Ethereum price and the ripple (XRP) price both recorded around double-digit percentage gains.

This kind of short, keen changes in the bitcoin price is often an effect of trading bots who initiate a buy or sell order, then others follow. That activity causes a domino effect on the price. The same effect may be caused by whales, large holders of a cryptocurrency or some other asset, when they buy or sell a big enough lump at under or above the current market price.

This activity causes the market price of the asset to suddenly move to sale, often causing devastation for exchange operators.

Can this rise in the bitcoin price be a sign of Nasdaq’s return to form? Some market observers say yes. Nasdaq last week dropped towards the end of the week.

Whoever started this run against $USDT was a very large market participant. Isn’t it very strange that both, Bitcoin and tether, break out at the same time?

Or the point is to show that the stablecoin couldn’t keep its peg. Anyway, it is the top story of the day.

In other words, time will show. And the time is on the side of Bitcoin.

UPDATE (17/6/2019): Bitcoin rose and hit One-Year High

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

15th October 2018
What causes cryptocurrencies to plunge these two days? Is it temporary?

2 min read

Cryptocurrencies plunge in the past two days. Financial markets around the world saw big declines over Thursday and Friday. Over $6 billion of value was wiped off global cryptocurrency markets in 24 hours led by XRP and ethereum as prices of digital coins continued to fall.

According to Coinmarketcap.com, the entire market capitalization or value of cryptocurrencies had plunged $6.72 billion in 24 hours as of about 11:32 a.m. HK/SIN time on Friday.

On Thursday it was noticed that something is happening. A sharp sell-off across the board erased billions of dollars of value in a matter of hours.

The cryptocurrencies plunge was led by XRP, which was trading at around 39.13 cents at 11.32 a.m. HK/SIN time, marking a 7.9 percent drop from the day before. It fell as low as 37.89 cents. Ethereum also fell to around $191.07, dropping 7.4 percent from the day before.

But, bitcoin largely stabilized at around $6,278.61, falling just under 0.8 percent on the day.

What happened?

Bithumb, currently the largest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea by trading volume, confirmed it has sold more than 38 percent of its total ownership to a blockchain consortium based in Singapore, for 400 billion won, or $350 million.

According to CoinDesk Korea, Bithumb confirmed the deal was signed on Oct. 11 with BK Global Consortium. It is a blockchain investment firm formed by BK Global, a plastic surgery medical group in Singapore.

Could it jeopardize the value of other cryptos?

Well, we should consider other reasons for cryptocurrencies plunge too.

Regulators across the world have been looking at how to deal with the growth of crypto assets with diverging views emerging. Countries like Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates are looking to become hubs for cryptocurrency businesses. While other nations like China have come down hard on the industry.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has expanded its crackdown on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), putting “hundreds” of projects at risk. This is according to a recent joint investigation by Yahoo Finance and Decrypt Media published Oct. 10.

The authors of the report, as the example, stressed that hundreds of crypto and blockchain startups that conducted token sales. They have eventually found that they had violated securities laws despite their endeavors to comply with regulations.

In response to SEC pressure, dozens of firms have reportedly “quietly agreed” to refund investors’ money and pay fines. Rather than attempt to reach legal compliance.

A hearing before the US Senate Banking Committee is expected to feature heavy criticism of the crypto sector.

For optimistic novices, those pitfalls and flaws were often glossed over. But with the bear market, the hearing may further sour retail sentiment. Two different viewpoints on the topic of cryptocurrency collided before a group of U.S senators on Thursday.

Economist Nouriel Roubini: “Crypto is the mother and father of all scams …blockchain is the most overhyped technology ever and is no better than a glorified database,” Roubini said in his opening statement.

But Van Valkenburgh said the committee that while blockchain and cryptocurrencies are not perfect or even fully complete at present. But they are a significant step in improving the financial situation for many.:

“Bitcoin is the world’s first globally accessible public money. Is it perfect? No. Neither was email when it was invented in 1972. Bitcoin’s not the best money on every margin. It’s not yet accepted everywhere. It’s not used often to quote prices and it’s not a stable store of value. But it is working, and the fact that it works without intermediaries is amazing.” said Van Valkenburgh.

The relationship between Tether and Bitfinex has come out with some interesting developments over the past few days.

After showing signs of trouble, Noble Bank halted its services for Bitfinex and Tether. This led to a potential loss of trust in the exchange and a stablecoin leading to funding withdrawals. The past month saw a half of the Bitcoin deposited in the Bitfinex cold wallet flowing out. And an additional 100 million USDT leaving circulation. Someone tried to sell millions of USDT for dollars on Kraken, depressing the price to $0.98.

The Bitcoin mining economy is also at a crossroads.

Competition and farm building peaked in the first half of 2018. It is possible that miners will attempt to sell BTC to recoup costs. In the past days, peak hashing power has coincided with falling rewards for existing miners.

One possible reason is that Bitmain has activated ASIC Boost for its mining rigs, making it more difficult for other miners to obtain rewards.

Philip Nunn said on Twitter:

“As of June 2018, over 80% of #Bitcoin mining is performed by six mining pools and five of those six pools are managed by individuals or organizations located in China.So this is really worrying. And $BTC maximalists must look at this as a huge threat. China controlling BTC”

But there are some optimistic words:

“I’m surprised people think bitcoin can never reach its old highs. We have to remember today that not even 50 million wallets that use crypto today, but there are four and a half billion Visa cards, so you know this is the early stage for crypto, I don’t think $12,000 will be a problem in the future,” Fundstrat’s Tom Lee told CNBC last week.

It is true the top three cryptocurrencies by market capitalization: bitcoin, ethereum, and XRP are all notably off their record high prices. They were hit at the end of last year and the beginning of 2018.

Bottom line

Many people in the cryptosphere love to speculate on just how high the prices of their favorite cryptocurrencies may rise. We have to say that does not matter because the cryptocurrency market is incredibly volatile, so cryptocurrencies can plunge.

Only time will tell us who predicted correctly if anyone!

The most important value of cryptocurrencies and assets are the future of transactions and value storage. And Bitcoin is leading this revolution. But this doesn’t make it easy to guarantee a specific price down the road.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

12th October 2018
Bitcoin goes high – How Much?

2 min read

Bitcoin is the future, Fiat is past!

Why not start with these words? Popular VC Tim Draper said it. And we all know how good he is in his predictions. In 2014 with bitcoin at only $413, popular VC, Tim Draper predicted bitcoin to reach $10,000 in three years. This was fulfilled a month earlier. This prediction brought him a great reputation among crypto fans and followers. He also predicts a $100k Bitcoin in 2018, not categorically but anyway.

Let assume this growth happens at the same tempo as the 3-year journey to $10k. But that’s precisely how Draper feels about Bitcoin prospects and he understands a lot about bitcoin’s foundation.

WOW, then we’re in for six digits.

Many of the investors are actually currently worried due to the high volatility in cryptocurrencies.

Is there any reason for that?

A cryptocurrency portfolio manager Jeet Singh, stated at World Economic Forum in Davos, that the current volatility is completely normal when it comes to the cryptocurrencies field. He stated that it is normal for cryptocurrencies to fluctuate by 70% to 80% and that is the main reason why the current volatility does not worry him at all.

Is there a fear of volatility?

But, according to him, long-term investors need not fear the volatility at all. Because they are here to stay for a longer period of time, they would not have a problem to hold the cryptocurrencies for a longer period of time.

Jeet Singh compared cryptocurrencies with current leading companies like Microsoft and Apple. In the beginning, their stocks were also volatile. But, as the companies develop their business model, the stocks not only rose but they become much more stable.

Prediction

He further added that Bitcoin would reach as high as $ 50,000 this year. That means, If the current price of Bitcoin being around just $ 10,000, that would be a fivefold increase once again.

What is really happening on the markets?

The world’s largest crypto brokerage Coinbase is reportedly close to finalizing a $500 million funding round at a valuation of $8 billion. And Binance has started to become more active in the investment sector, funding blockchain startups internationally.

While major cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, and BitMEX are seeing their businesses flourish with lucrative business models and high-profit margins, minor exchanges are struggling in the bear market.

Bear market

This week, the UK’s oldest exchange, Coinfloor, has slashed the number of its employees. After recording a decline in its revenues as a consequence of the drop in the daily trading volume of major cryptocurrencies.

Also, the emergence of many cryptocurrency exchanges in the local market causes this.

But Coinbase entered the local cryptocurrency exchange market of the UK. This has stagnated over the years due to the lack of infrastructure and user demand. It was eliminating exchange rates and appealing to local users that have been awaiting a reliable cryptocurrency exchange in the region.

In South Korea, a cryptocurrency exchange backed by the country’s biggest commercial banks. Internet conglomerates, and technology corporations such as Upbit, Gopax, and Korbit have imposed dominance over the local market throughout the past two years.

The fact that an exchange in the size of Coinfloor cannot sustain high-cost operations demonstrates that they need strong infrastructure and backing from major investors and conglomerates.

On Monday, 8. October, practically all the top 100 cryptocurrencies are seeing reliable growth on the day.

Ups and Downs

Bitcoin (BTC) has seen a strong boost, by press time growing almost 2 percent on the day to trade solidly above the $6,600 mark at $6,664.

The breakthrough to a higher price point comes after several days of sideways trading. One crypto trader joked just a few days before, he said that bitcoin decided to be the ultimate stablecoin.

That same day, a Bloomberg pointed up the top coin’s marked price stability, proclaiming that Bitcoin had “hit an inflection point with volatility at a 17-month low.” The flipside to such steadiness, the Bloomberg noted, is lower trading volumes, due to lower “speculative involvement.”

On its weekly chart, Bitcoin is now just over one percent in the green, with monthly growth a strong 8 percent.
Ethereum is around 0.6 percent in the red; monthly growth is close to 17 percent.

Ripple had however tapered off throughout most of early October: the token remains a stark 14.5 percent in the red on its weekly chart. But on the monthly base, its gains are, an astonishing almost 70 percent.

About other

The remaining top ten coins on CoinMarketCap are all in the green, almost all-seeing between 2 and 4 percent growth: Cardano (ADA) is uprising almost 5%. Firmly in the green: EOS (EOS) is up close to 4 percent on the day at $5.92, Stellar (XLM) and Litecoin (LTC) both up just over 2 percent.

Most of the investors are keeping away from the cryptocurrency boom for now. Many of them are just holding their holdings in order to find out whether the cryptocurrencies resume their uptrend or not.

We may say it is still too doubtful for most of the investors to take a call.

But the fact is, institutions are increasing their presence in the cryptocurrencies field. That would add value and credibility to the cryptocurrencies in the future. That’s why we can’t see further falling. The main point is that regulatory hurdles have to be sorted.

After that, we all can be sure that the value of cryptocurrencies would again more.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

9th October 2018
BANK OF CENTRAL BANKS WANTS TO STOP CREATION OF CRYPTO

3 min read

The rise of Bitcoin and the blockchain industry has been accompanied by criticism, just like any other emerging tech sector. Such criticism was heard during the dawn of the internet, and despite it, the internet is still alive and well today. Industry experts have offered different hot takes on the nature of cryptocurrency in general, calling it everything from a bubble to a Ponzi scheme.

The latest well-known figure to criticize the cryptocurrency industry, however, is Agustín Carstens, head of the Bank for International Settlements, also known as the central bank for all central banks.

According to Carstens in a recent interview, young people should stop trying to create money in the form of cryptocurrency.

The Bank for International Settlements’ opinion on cryptocurrency may not gain any traction within the community because things have been improving for cryptocurrency. Banks and large corporations have been warming up to blockchain, the underpinning technology of most cryptocurrencies.

Corporations like IBM have developed enterprise platforms and partnered with cryptocurrency platforms like Stellar to provide blockchain-based payment solutions. Several significant partnerships have also been made between cryptocurrency platforms and banks. Even with the fear of fraud and theft, banks realize that there is profit to be made from the industry and if their customers decide to trade, they may have no choice but to cooperate.

During the interview, Agustín Carstens was asked if cryptocurrencies can be described as money. He replied by explicitly stating that cryptocurrencies are not money, rather they are a type of asset that can be invested in. By Carstens’ description, these digital assets can’t assume the functionality of money in the economy due to the way they are created.

Mostly, cryptocurrencies are produced by a group of people who have either been appointed, elected or allowed to secure the network and receive new cryptocurrency in the form of block rewards. The most incentivized people in a cryptocurrency community are its miners. They make a profit when they create new assets and, in turn, deliver the needed security for the network.

Carstens has stated that this is a bad model for money and simply does not maximize its usefulness. Money is supposed to be a great store of value, means of payment and unit of account. However, so far, digital assets like cryptocurrency have proven to fail badly at all three things.

As for the hype surrounding the industry at the moment, mostly due to the peak prices achieved by major cryptocurrencies in 2017, Carstens believes that it is only happening as a result of the knowledge that a lot of money can be made on cryptocurrencies in a short period. He also called crypto assets a Ponzi scheme, bubble and environmental disaster due to the infrastructure needed to keep some of their networks running securely.

Carstens alluded to the fact that he is sure that cryptocurrency will not have a happy ending. He compared digital assets to the renowned National Bank electronic payment system of Switzerland saying that cryptocurrencies may never exhibit that level of efficiency and trust.

Central banks, on the other hand, have exhibited that level of trust, which is built on several years of efficient service, a level which Carstens is sure that digital asset networks will never achieve. This is why he believes that young people should be more focused on innovation and creative solutions to problems instead of trying to re-invent money.

This is not the first time that Carstens has openly criticized Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry. In fact, he gave a talk on the topic at the Goethe University in Germany in early 2018, stating that central banks must work hard to stop the rise of cryptocurrency. This would ensure that the technology does not meddle with the finance industry and affect the financial stability of various world economies.

He also spoke about the difficulties associated with working with Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) in central banks, including the lack of efficiency, the expensive costs, and the slow speeds. Prior to this, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, expressed his own opinion on cryptocurrencies calling them risky assets. He also stated that the European Central Bank is continuously working to identify threats and dangers that cryptocurrency may pose so that they are mitigated before any harm can be done.

In addition to this, Carstens based the enthusiasm within the cryptocurrency industry on speculative mania and their use for illegal transactions. According to the BIS head, authorities are getting closer to finding ways to control and prevent the risks associated with digital asset use, stating that it is alarming that several banks have come up with bitcoin ATM’s where BTC can easily be bought or sold, an easy alternative to a Bitcoin exchange.

As long as the most prominent use case for cryptocurrencies lies in illegal payments, central banks cannot merge the technology with that of the banking sector, to avoid financial disaster. This is similar to the opinion shared by the U.S. Secret Service concerning the provision of regulations for cryptocurrencies, especially those that provide anonymity to users. These coins are usually misused for illegal transactions and present issues when tracing such payments.

The BIS has taken this stance on the industry for a long time. In February 2018, they highlighted issues with the scalability model of cryptocurrencies, stating that those with more users and a more extensive network are more likely to break down before others. Again, the bank warned the public to avoid making any risky decisions concerning their investments within the space.

According to the BIS annual report, due to the fragility, lack of stability and lack of scalability, trust can easily disappear from the network and its capabilities. Such networks are also subject to regular congestion as they grow larger. One example is the Ethereum network congestion that occurred subsequent to the launch of Cryptokitties. Other issues addressed include transaction fees and limits.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Many have argued that banks make money and are taking a hypocritical stand by telling others not to. The warning by Carstens will most likely not be taken seriously in light of the continuous flood of investors into the cryptocurrency space. Despite the volatility within the industry, cryptocurrency has come to be recognized as a way to invest and make a lot of money. As a result, demand for digital assets has increased over time and will continue to lead to an increase in supply, not the opposite scenario that Carstens is proposing.

Despite the bold statements by Carstens, the cryptocurrency industry has seen improvement in the number of projects, investors and the amount of money raised through crowdfunding. Apart from the statements that tell young people to stop trying to make money, he raised some relevant points including the insecurity and expenses associated with running such networks. Another problem lies in the lack of stringent regulations within the industry to govern its many investment and trade practices.

Carstens continues to be outspoken about the Bank of International Settlements lack of support for cryptocurrency as a whole. Other experts in various financial and technological fields also continue to show mixed opinions on the subject.

However, the recurring themes are rooted in regulation, theft, illegal activities and profits. Hopefully, cryptocurrency will get to a middle ground that makes security provision for users, regulators, like central banks and even law enforcement, easier.

The original article was published https://www.markemlickprivateequity.com/

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

4th October 2018