Day: July 2, 2017

Key Highlights Ethereum classic price after a decline towards $15.80 against the US Dollar found support. There is a crucial contracting triangle pattern with resistance at $17.50 forming on the hourly chart (data feed via Kraken) of ETC/USD. A break and close above $17.50 might trigger further gains in the near term. Ethereum classic price … Continue reading Ethereum Classic Price Technical Analysis – ETC/USD Approaching Break

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The European Union has slapped a $2.7 billion fine on Google for abusing its search engine market dominance in building its own online shopping service.

The EU has found that Google has been denying “consumers a genuine choice” by manipulating its search engine results and steering customers to its own shopping platform. It’s alleged that Google has been artificially and illegally promoting its own price comparison service in searches and thus has been denying customers opportunities of making genuine choices. It’s also alleged that Google has thus been denying rival firms the ability to compete on a level playing field.

This decision by the European Union, which can be termed “dramatic”in all respects, would definitely have far-reaching implications for Google. Google would now have to stop its “illegal activities” within 90 days and to explain how it will “reform” its ways or else the company would have to face fine of up to €10.6m a day. This amount would be equal to 5 percent of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries.

Detailed Statement from the EU

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, has made this statement that shows that EU is unbiased in its decision against Google– “Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That’s a good thing. But Google’s strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn’t just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors…What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation.”

In her detailed statement, Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has explained how Google entered the separate market of comparison shopping in Europe with “Froogle”, which was later re-named “Google Product Search” and then came to be known as “Google Shopping”. Commissioner Vestager also explains that Google started to give its own product a significantly better treatment than rivals and started systematically giving prominent placement only to its own product in search results. Vestager also states that Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results.

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s statement says- “The evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival appears on average only on page four of Google’s search results. Others appear even further down. This means that Google Shopping is much more visible and other comparison shopping services are much less visible to consumers. As a result, competitors are much less likely to be clicked on. The Commission found evidence of sudden drops in clicks on certain rival websites of more than 90%, after Google applied demotions. Some of them adapted and managed to recover some traffic, but never in full.”, and adds- “Google’s practices have therefore allowed Google Shopping to make significant gains in traffic at the expense of its competitors.”

It’s following this that the European Union decided to take action against “Google’s violations of EU antitrust rules”.

The Google Side of the Story

Shares in Alphabet have reportedly fallen 1.5 percent in pre-market trading in New York, following this move by the EU.

Google, however, has rejected the EU’s findings and is likely to appeal. Google has clarified that Google shows shopping ads and connects users with thousands of advertisers in ways that are useful for both just because advertisers want to promote the very same products that people want to find quickly while shopping online.

In a detailed blog post, Google Senior Vice President and General Counsel Kent Walker says- “We believe the European Commission’s online shopping decision underestimates the value of those kinds of fast and easy connections. While some comparison shopping sites naturally want Google to show them more prominently, our data shows that people usually prefer links that take them directly to the products they want, not to websites where they have to repeat their searches…We think our current shopping results are useful and are a much-improved version of the text-only ads we showed a decade ago. Showing ads that include pictures, ratings, and prices benefits us, our advertisers, and most of all, our users. And we show them only when your feedback tells us they are relevant. Thousands of European merchants use these ads to compete with larger companies like Amazon and eBay.”

Adds Kent Walker- “When you use Google to search for products, we try to give you what you’re looking for. Our ability to do that well isn’t favoring ourselves, or any particular site or seller–it’s the result of hard work and constant innovation, based on user feedback…Given the evidence, we respectfully disagree with the conclusions announced today. We will review the Commission’s decision in detail as we consider an appeal, and we look forward to continuing to make our case.”

Cryptocurrency lending is about to boom. Today, crypto-currency lending is a field that does not have a plausible service provider due to the pseudo-anonymous nature of crypto-currency. The underlying issue with crypto-lending is the repayments of loans. How do people that do not know each other trust each other? Trustless lending. ETHLend is a decentralized … Continue reading The Rise of Decentralized P2P Crypto-Currency Lending

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Key Highlights ETH price after a downside move found support at $240 against the US Dollar and traded higher. There was a bearish trend line with resistance at $265 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via SimpleFX), which was broken recently. The pair is now moving higher and struggling to close above $280 … Continue reading Ethereum Price Technical Analysis – ETH/USD Resuming Uptrend

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MobileGo is holding its ground against bitcoin and seems to be exhibiting more upside momentum against ethereum and the US dollar.

The post MobileGo Price Technical Analysis for 07/03/2017 – Return of the Bulls? appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Key Highlights Creditbit price managed to find bids near the 0.00021BTC area against the Bitcoin and started a recovery. There is a key bearish trend line with resistance at 0.00028BTC formed on the 7-day chart of CRB/BTC (data feed from Coinmarketcap). The price is currently above the 0.00026BTC support, which holds a lot of importance … Continue reading Creditbit Price Technical Analysis – CRB/BTC Recovers Above 0.00025BTC

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Bitcoin price is consolidating in a symmetrical triangle at the moment so it might be best to wait for a convincing break before taking any positions.

The post Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 07/03/2017 – Waiting for a Breakout appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Ethereum – the cryptocurrency created in 2013 – has been a story of success in the crypto world. Some key events marked its ascendancy. Key technological innovations at the right time consolidated huge competitive advantages when compared to other cryptocurrencies, and in periods of crisis this coin emerged even stronger.

Since the beginning and because of the successive successes of the project, Ethereum has had media coverage that further galvanized public awareness to the coin. Another relevant support came from the financial industry itself when it came to accept Ethereum as a new form of investment.

Major brokerage firms start expanding their offer introducing Ethereum in their platforms. Ethereum trading was born. Also contributing to the emergence of Ethereum was the support of major companies such as Microsoft, Intel or JPMorgan Chase. Finally, governments further legitimized the coin by considering it as a credible instrument of exchange that needs to be regulated.

Ethereum was therefore not only able to introduce technical and technological innovations in a very competitive space but also to create the conditions to, in moment of crisis, emerge stronger. These two factors go hand in hand and are leading to major mutations in the cryptocurrency market.

Because of its achievements Ethereum is challenging the predominant cryptocurrency: Bitcoin. And in our opinion, it will surpass Bitcoin by the end of 2018 – if not sooner.

We will trace this story of success in our infographic. In it we will identify key events that marked the ascendancy of this cryptocurrency. You will also understand why Ethereum is set to overtake Bitcoin by the end of 2018. This isn’t a fact but it’s a clear tendency. And the market itself is supporting this transformation: since the beginning of 2017, and at its peak, Ethereum registered a 5001% growth. Find the reasons why…

Infographic Source: Invezz

While the huge reach and endless benefits of Bitcoin are undisputed, it’s the cryptocurrency’s volatility that has kept it from enjoying a greater global take-up.

Last month saw another massive drop in Bitcoin that saw $4 billion wiped off the cryptocurrency’s value. And although the price of Bitcoin has rallied in the following weeks, it provides sceptics with another reason why to be hesitant over implementing the Bitcoin into their financial operations.

The drop in value was all the more startling as it went against trends that suggested that Bitcoin was starting to become more accepted by large government and financial institutions.

With the likes of Japan legalising Bitcoin for digital payments, and investors in other Asian nations like Korea helping to boost liquidity into the cryptocurrency, it seemed that Bitcoin was poised for another record-breaking year.

But the sudden value drop in May shows that Bitcoin needs to stabilize as a currency, and it’s only through implementation among recognized brands that it’s going to give consumers the security that’s essential for widespread use.

Brands as far-ranging as gaming companies like Steam and coffee chains like Starbucks have already adopted Bitcoin technologies. And whilst the casino games like Irish Riches featured at New Jersey Online Casinos currently don’t offer Bitcoin payments, it’s easy to see how the cryptocurrency’s log of traceable transactions could help add an extra level of security.

Despite these obvious benefits, there’s still something of a negative perception about Bitcoin. With its popularity being linked to illegal purchases on the now defunct Silk Road, it faces something of a battle in attempting to reverse its public image.

Thankfully it seems that there’s a growing range of companies and institutions who are putting their energies behind stabilizing Bitcoin. Just last week, the bank, Barclays, made fresh demands that UK regulators attempt to bring the cryptocurrency into mainstream use.

Whilst attempting to regulate a decentralized currency are always going to go against the central concepts of Bitcoin’s ethos, it’s evident that a degree of compromise on both sides are necessary in order for Bitcoin to truly find mainstream acceptance and stabilize its price volatility.

But with places like Kreuzberg in Berlin being packed with small businesses that accept Bitcoin as a mobile payment method, it looks like we’ll hopefully be able to play casino games like Irish Riches with all of the security and convenience that Bitcoin offers very soon.

Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that was unheard of at one time has grown to become something that can’t be ignored by anyone anymore. The increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, its decentralized nature and a certain degree of pseudonymity associated with it has become a cause of concern for government bodies. The United States Congress is … Continue reading Coin Center Gives Crash Course in Bitcoin and Blockchain to the Congress

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Saturday, July 1st was filled with fresh new code as the Segwit2x working group released the team’s protocol beta v1.14.3 with release notes. Alongside this, a new implementation of a user-activated hard fork (UAHF) was made available for download the same day.

Also read: Mining, Merchants, and Traders—Thailand’s Got the Bitcoin Fever

The Segwit2x Beta Codebase Has Been Released

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in the world of bitcoin development and even more so within the context of scaling. This weekend the Segwit2x beta was released, as well as a bitcoin developer’s mailing list message from Jeff Garzik who’s been doing a lot of the code work for this project. The new release includes various bug fixes and consensus changes according to the Github repo.

“The charter and goal of the segwit2x effort has always been tightly focused on a “SegWit + 2M HF” safe network upgrade, and producing/testing/auditing software to accomplish that,” explains the Segwit2x beta release. “Milestones are intentionally labeled “alpha” or “beta” per normal software engineering practices, and expectations should be set accordingly.”

The over-simplified summary of the network upgrade sequence is: bit-4 SegWit activation + 144*90 blocks This matches the goal outlined in the kickoff Project Mission: “Segwit will start being enforced shortly after lock in, whereas as 2mb blocks will be a bit farther out to ensure people have plenty of time to upgrade their nodes.”

Bitcoin proponents, who are often very vocal on social media and forums, are still voicing mixed signals when it comes to this compromise. As far as mining support goes, the “intention” to signal the next steps is roughly 84.7 percent at the time of writing.

The User Activated Hard Fork Code “Bitcoin ABC” Revealed

At The Future of Bitcoin event in Arnhem, software engineer and the chief developer of the D compiler SDC, Amaury Séchet, revealed “Bitcoin ABC”, an implementation of a UAHF.

Séchet gave the crowd in Arnhem an explanation of the ABC protocol by detailing that it falls in line with Bitmain’s recent contingency plan announcement. However, Bitmain has not officially made any statements concerning endorsement of the Bitcoin ABC project. During the conference, the developer answered questions about the new implementation and revealed it doesn’t support Segwit or Replace By Fee (RBF) components. The fork will also remove the 1MB block size limit and will follow this UAHF spec available for review on Github.      

“This UAHF specification is inspired by the idea of a flag day, but changed to a time-based fork due to miner requests,” explains the UAHF spec. “It should be possible to change easily to a height-based fork – the sense of the requirements would largely stay the same.”

Furthermore, the team has revealed its vision of “achievable block sizes over the coming years” which scales upwards of 16MB by August of 2019. Séchet further announced at the conference the project is being helped by a pseudonym programmer named “Ftrader.” The developers have also started a Bitcoin ABC subreddit where Ftrader has been responding to questions and a very basic website as well. The team’s site has the Bitcoin ABC binaries and code available for download.

With the beta code release for Segwit2x, the new UAHF code, and the current user-activated soft fork (UASF) movement there’s a lot to follow this summer in regards to the bitcoin scaling debate and solutions from many development teams. Bitcoin.com will be sure to keep our readers informed every step of the way.

What do you think about the beta release of Segwit2x? What do you think about the UAHF plan? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, The Future of Bitcoin, and the Bitcoin ABC and Segwit2x Github repos.

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The post Segwit2x Beta Released as New UAHF Code Proposal `ABC´ Removes 1MB-Limit appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Things are not looking all that great for Ethereum right now. The popular cryptocurrency suffered a major crash not too long ago and it remains the market is still recovering. The past two days have heralded another downturn for Ether, making it highly doubtful Ethereum will pass Bitcoin in market cap anytime soon. It seems safe to say more volatility is on the horizon for Ethereum holders.

What is Going on With the Ethereum Price?

Looking over the Ethereum price charts leaves traders and investors disappointed, as their hopes for challenging Bitcoin’s crown subside. More specifically, the ETH price has taken another beating, as it declined by 7.65% over the past 24 hours. This puts the value of one Ether well below the US$300 mark and it is possible this value will keep heading toward US$270 or lower over the coming days. This momentum is not entirely surprising given Ethereum’s bullish trend throughout the first half of 2017.

It is not hard to forget once ETH was worth under US$11 back in early January of this year. Things have certainly picked up over the past few months, culminating in an Ether price peak of nearly US$400, according to Coinmarketcap. Such a spectacular price increase can only be met with future price volatility, which is what we are seeing on a daily basis right now. Even so, the Ether value increase has been nothing short of impressive this year.

Ethereum enthusiasts have referred to a phenomenon known as the flippening all year. This trend would occur once Ethereum’s market cap surpasses that of Bitcoin. Although both currencies were only separated by “just” US$8bn, the gap has widened once again. More specifically, Bitcoin’s market cap is close to US$41bn right now, whereas Ethereum’s is only US$26.32bn. The flippening will not be happening anytime soon at this rate.

The bigger question is why Ethereum is facing such a setback right now. Shifting market conditions are likely the culprit. Moreover, the Ethereum blockchain and its technology are weighed down by the influx of cryptocurrency ICOs. Transactions are confirmed far slower when a big ICO happens, and smart contracts used by these projects often contain issues which need to be fixed later on. The technology is still premature, yet investors also see this can become a much bigger problem if things aren’t resolved quickly.

Speaking of cryptocurrency ICOs, they have quickly become the main use case of the Ether currency. That is not necessarily a positive development either. With so many projects raising funds in Ether, the chances of a market “dump” will increase as well. When teams need funding, they will convert ETH to fiat currency, creating negative pressure across the exchanges. When more projects sell off their raised funds, the price per ETH will undoubtedly continue to go down quite quickly. It is unclear if that is part of the ongoing price drop right now, but it is something to keep in mind.

It is unclear what the future will hold for Ethereum right now. The Ethereum price is very volatile, which is only to be expected at this point. However, Ethereum is not a store-of-value by any means. With so many “dumb money” flowing into Ethereum to participate in cryptocurrency ICOs, it is virtually impossible to determine the real value of the existing coin supply. Technical issues are becoming a major problem as well. If this trend keeps up, the flippening may never happen at all. These are interesting times for Ethereum to prove its value, but so far, the project leaves quite a bit to be desired.

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Attorney Katherine Cooper looks at work ongoing to standardize virtual currency law in the US, and the issues that stand in the way.

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