Day: October 11, 2017

This is the era of the sharing economy as proved by giants like Uber and Airbnb. Users expect convenience and speed while prefer dealing directly with other people rather than a corporation. Paxful, a bitcoin marketplace has recognised this trend and is growing rapidly. The volume on Paxful has quadrupled compared to the beginning of … Continue reading Paxful Takes Fintech into the Sharing Economy

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On October 11, the web portal Bitcoin.org published its controversial hard fork warning update that contains a list of companies and services that have pledged to support the Segwit2x hard fork this November. The website operators believe the 2MB fork is not supported by the majority of users and developers within the bitcoin ecosystem, and therefore consider the Segwit2x project a shift towards an incompatible “altcoin.”

Also read: Two More Bitcoin Startups Reveal Hard Fork Contingency Plans

Bitcoin.org Publishes Controversial Warning Update

Just recently news.Bitcoin.com reported on the owners of Bitcoin.org suggesting the site should add a hard fork warning, and denounce bitcoin businesses supporting Segwit2x. Of course, the request was met with a bit of controversy, but the warning was pushed forward by the site’s maintainers. Now the statement has been published on the website, and a red banner linked to the warning can be found on every page located on the portal’s domain.

“A subsection of the Bitcoin economy including prominent businesses such as Coinbase, Xapo, and Bitpay have signed an agreement to adopt and implement a contentious hard fork of Bitcoin sometime in November,” explains Bitcoin.org’s warning statement. “A hard fork is a backwards incompatible change to the Bitcoin network. This hard fork is not supported by the majority of the Bitcoin users and developers and is, therefore, a contentious hard fork.”

By adopting this hard fork, we believe the supporters of this agreement are shifting their users to an alternative currency (an altcoin) which is incompatible with Bitcoin.

‘Blind Trust’ Towards Bitcoin Miners

Bitcoin.org’s statement also details that miners are mainly responsible for “transaction ordering, putting transactions into blocks, and collectively creating a chain of these blocks.” The organization explains that most wallets “blindly trust” the longest chain’s records according to miners. However, Bitcoin.org says there is a significant amount of miners who “support the contentious hard fork.”

“Therefore the longest chain as seen by most mobile wallets may not be the true blockchain — As a result of this, spending money from a mobile wallet during a hard fork is dangerous,” Bitcoin.org’s warning states.

You will be vulnerable to many attacks as your wallet is not aware that the miners are breaking the consensus rules on the longest chain.

 ‘Consensus Isn’t an Attack; It is How Bitcoin is Designed to Function’

Further, the warning announcement details that people should reference Bitcoin.org, Bitcointalk.org and the /r/bitcoin Reddit forum to make sure things are safe. The website then lists 59 bitcoin-based companies and services that have pledged to support the hard fork. This includes wallet providers, miners, exchanges, and other types of businesses.

Of course, the warning post was controversial between members of both sides of the scaling debate. As usual, a good portion of the /r/bitcoin forum community applauded the warning announcement, while at the same time the /r/btc community didn’t like the statement. At the Github repository where Bitcoin.org organizes the website’s code, there were also people who disagreed with Cobra Bitcoin’s decision to apply the warning banner. “NACK — This PR as it stands is deceiving,” explains one reviewer adamantly against the warning post. “Consensus isn’t an attack; it is how bitcoin is designed to function — Beyond the fundamental misunderstanding, the writing is self-indulgent and has a sense of viciousness to it.”

Collaborating with Jeff Garzik to write something more neutral would likely be a good course of action if the goal is to end up with something informative rather than inflammatory. Education is a great goal, and it does seem to be at least part of the motivation behind this PR — the way it is presented seems like something a ministry of propaganda would produce.

The warning is also being discussed on social media like Twitter causing even more debates. “Glad to see many of the rational comments regarding Bitcoin.org ‘s highly political message today. — It has some facts, for sure, combined with lots of opinions and propaganda — It’s partisan and political,” Shapeshift founder Erik Voorhees explains to his Twitter followers.

What do you think of Bitcoin.org’s warning message? Do you think it is too opinionated and political or do you think it is factual and necessary? Let us know your opinions in the comments below.  

Images via Github, Bitcoin.org, and Pixabay.

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The project, which is co-founded by former Executive Director and Founding Board Member of the Bitcoin Foundation Jon Matonis, aims to scale Bitcoin economically in order to become a truly useful currency of global trade and settlement.

11th October, 2017, Gibraltar, Institutional Bitcoin exchange Globitex, which is currently in limited beta, is holding a token sale to scale up operations with the aim of making Bitcoin a truly global currency. The exchange already offers institutional level FIX API for direct market access for algorithmic traders, paving the way for the virtual currency to become a universal medium of exchange across the full breadth of the international financial and commodity markets.

Bitcoin’s biggest problem: liquidity

Whilst the Bitcoin protocol has been undergoing concrete steps for Bitcoin’s technical scaling, Globitex’s founders recognise the chief issue holding back its wider use is liquidity. Bitcoin is still relatively thinly traded, with low volumes by conventional market standards. Despite being the ideal currency for international settlement across the spectrum of the financial and commodities markets, it cannot serve this purpose without a step-change in market depth and trading volumes.

If Bitcoin is to become mainstream, it must be used both as a unit of account and medium of exchange for large international trades – goods and services that make up our reality.

– Liza Aizupiete, Managing Director of Globitex

By scaling up the exchange’s capacity and developing new markets, Globitex aims to increase Bitcoin’s liquidity by orders of magnitude. The purpose of Globitex is to facilitate Bitcoin price stability by enabling its use as a direct currency of settlement for commodities, money markets and other financial instruments. Ultimately this would allow traders to price goods in Bitcoin, using it as the reference currency.

Interest rates are the price of money and they are the lifeblood of a modern economy. As capital markets for Bitcoin mature around the world, Globitex will be providing a common reference rate similar to LIBOR. 

– Jon Matonis, Chairman of Globitex and former Executive Director and Founding Board Member of the Bitcoin Foundation

Globitex token (GBX)

Globitex’s token sale will fund the scaling of its existing exchange infrastructure. The cryptocurrency funds collected will allow the team to access new markets for Bitcoin, including commodities, global money markets and derivatives – all with Bitcoin as the unit of account.

The GBX utility token will take the form of an EIP-20 (previously known as ERC-20) compliant smart contract on the Ethereum platform. GBX will be used to pay fees for settling trades on the Globitex exchange, feature in loyalty programmes, and participate in future success of the company, helping to align interests between the exchange, its users and contributors.

GBX token sale

Globitex will open its token sale on 8 November 2017 and run it until 7 December 2017, or until 72 hours after the soft cap of 500 million tokens sold is reached. The standard token price will be EUR 0.10 equivalent, with discounts up to 15% for early investors. GBX will be offered in exchange for Bitcoin (XBT), Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

For more information about Globitex product visit https://Globitex.com. To participate in the token sale visit www.GlobitexICO.com.

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

Hello and welcome to News BTC’s Market Outlook October 12. DASH/USD DASH continues to chop around the $290 level on Wednesday, as we look to build some type of base in this area. If we can break above the $300 level, then the buyers will jump in and continue to push much higher. In the … Continue reading DASH/USD and LTC/USD Technical Analysis October 12 2017

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Hello and welcome to News BTC’s Market Outlook October 12. ETH/USD Ethereum initially rallied during the session on Wednesday, but pulled back towards the $298 level, or we found buyers. We rallied from there, reaching towards the $300 level. If we can break above the $302 level, the market should then go to the $305 … Continue reading ETH/USD and ETH/BTC Technical Analysis October 12 2017

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Hello and welcome to News BTC’s Market Outlook October 12. BTC/USD Bitcoin rallied a bit during the day on Wednesday, reaching towards the $4800 level. The market has resistance just above though, so I think we will continue to bounce around in this area, perhaps going a bit lower to reach towards more support. I … Continue reading BTC/USD and BTC/JPY Technical Analysis October 12 2017

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Key Highlights ETH price traded with a slight bullish tone and moved above the $300 level against the US Dollar. There are two bullish trend lines forming with support at $302.40 and $299.50 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via SimpleFX). The price might continue to move higher and could challenge the $309-310 … Continue reading Ethereum Price Technical Analysis – ETH/USD Steady Above $300

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Bitcoin price is within striking distance of its record highs, so a quick bounce from profit-taking might be in the cards soon.

The post Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 10/12/2017 – Bounce or Break from All-Time Highs? appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Key Highlights Ripple price is trading in a range above the $0.2550 support area against the US Dollar. Yesterday’s highlighted contracting triangle pattern with current resistance at $0.2640 is intact on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair (data source from Kraken). The price might soon either move above $0.2650 or break the 0.2600 support … Continue reading Ripple Price Technical Analysis – XRP/USD Approaching Break

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Key Points Bitcoin cash price is trading in a range below the $320 level against the US Dollar. There is a short term contracting triangle forming with resistance at $315 on the hourly chart of BCH/USD (data feed from Kraken). The price remains at a risk of more declines as long as there is no … Continue reading Bitcoin Cash Price Technical Analysis – BCH/USD Remains At Risk

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You hear stories like that all the time — someone bought, mined, or get payed in Bitcoins in 2011, dumped old computer, and then — bam! — the coins are worth 4 000 $ each in 2017. There is no use crying over spilled crypto milk — very few saw that coming. But what caused such massive cash influx into Bitcoin? Why it makes USDs — the backbone of the fiat financing — seem like a worthless peace of paper? Is BTC just a bubble? There is aт answer that no one talks about.

Dark markets are Tor-powered, anonymous libertarian marketplaces, offering everything you can’t buy in Walmart— stolen IDs, cards, drugs, guns, pirated content. In general dark markets are ultra secure and anonymous, because the payments in crypto are anonymous thanks to tumblers or mixers, that basically use coinjoin protocol to launder cash. But most of the time FBI manages to find a way to either DDoS or shed a light on one or two markets each year. The first mainstram market Silkroad was founded by a “pro-free-economy” Ross Ulbricht aka Dread Pirate Roberts. By the way, do you know what blew his cover? He loved his nickname ‘frosty’ too much.

The Silk Road gathered over one million users and USD 1.2 billion in sales. Let’s see whether we can connect the dots. Silk Road peak popularity was in 2012–2013. Here is a scrutiny of Silk Road operations — partly courtesy of Ross Ulbricht trial, during which all BTC addresses were uncovered.

Here is a chart from 2012 representing Silk Road development:

And here is a Bitcoin price chart at that time:

As you can see, the figures correlate proportionally. Bitcoin derived its worth from utility as a currency in a place where traceable fiat currencies were unusable.

But Bitcoin is clumsy now — it is slow and expensive to transact. However, people still flock to it as it is old and stable. Just like gold in the old times — to pay with gold, you have to put gold in a cart, harness it with horses and spend months and months to deliver the payment. Gold was old, well-known and valuable. Then came paper money. Then banks and obligations, and credit. Then credit cards. Then Bitcoin. And now we have altcoins, take Ethereum and Ethereum-based coins.

The second biggest darkmarket, Aplhabay, was recently shut down by the combined effort of US law enforcement agencies. Just when Alphabay implemented Ether support on March 18, 2017, Ether price soared to 50 USD, around a 300 percent increase. This is another example of how much markets influence crypto, and this can’t be ignored.

Although Ethereum devs do not actively promote the use of Ether as currency, but rather focus on promoting it is as a platform for DApps, it is still the second most used currency in payments. It’s popularity as a platform made it stable and developed. Right now, CEO of Ethereum world Vitalik Buterin is delivering a scalability solution: Plasma.

There are tons of other cryptos as well. Many of them are developed on the Ethereum platform, and that means they are mined on Ethereum blockchain (merged mining) and transferred between ordinary Ethereum wallets. This adds to stability, popularity and value of Ethereum. Though the network becomes often times too crowded when there is a big ICO.

So, Ether is beautiful — it is speedy and cheap. It’s market cap is reaching BTC levels, but with it being said, there is still no way to buy Ether anonymously, no LocalBitcoins for Ether and its tokens. Centralized exchanges require ID and phone number verification — a long and complicated process, where passports, IDs and bank statements/utility bills should be submitted, even for small payments. This is overregulation.They can also control their price in any way they want, and define for themselves which token they want on their platform. The latter is especially painful for the ICO crowd. LocalBitcoins.com introduced a peer-to-peer exchange system in 2012, and it has been enormously popular ever since. The price offered there is truly the best market price, and all BTCs are bought and sold quickly and privately with any way you want: cash deposit, card transfer, mobile payments, electronic payments, you can even schedule a meeting IRL and change the cash for Bitcions. All of this is secured by an automatic escrow system, supplemented by arbitration/dispute resolution from LocalBitcoins staff. LocalBitcoins also generated tens of millions in profits, taking 1% fee from every advertised deal.

If you support privacy and believe that Fiat-Ethereum gateway control should be spread around, have a look at Ethereum peer-to-peer exchange CoinsOpen.com. During ICO, it will sell tokens that will evenly get all of the exchange profits in form of dividends, the process that is transparently powered by an Ethereum smart contract. All of the exchange commission addresses and turnover will be transparent and easily verifiable. Every 15 days, a smart contract distributes 100% of the exchange profits between 21 000 000 tokens in form of Ether. Exchange is closed-source, for-profit and operates on lowest fees, and also has a convenient escrow and dispute resolution system, and no ERC20 token will be denied from the exchange.

We believe it will boost the Ethereum ecosystem and allow for anonymous acquiring of Ether, which in turn, will lead to Ethereum acceptance as a payment method in all places where fast, cheap payments and privacy are a concern.

libre_bear,

coinsopen.com

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

Unlike other projects’ governance and funding systems, SmartCash will direct 80% of the block reward to budget funding.