Day: April 13, 2018

Investment firm Pantera Capital has published an open letter that outlines a bullish sentiment and optimism for Bitcoin in the foreseeable future. In a lengthy Medium Post signed by CEO Dan Morehead and CIO Joey Krugg, the pair had plenty of positive notes regarding Bitcoin over the coming weeks and months.

First, the letter pointed out that IBM recently kicked off an advertisement campaign giving credibility to blockchain technology with all its benefits and important features.

“While watching an ad about the many cool things that this unnamed company or product could do. I was like ‘Yeah. Who cares? Blockchains can do all that.’ The credits rolled — it was an IBM ad for blockchain. That’s a huge milestone. Legit company spending serious money to credentialize blockchain. Can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” wrote Morehead and Krugg.

Then the letter suggested that Bitcoin had shown remarkable resiliency in the wake of US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) events that put regulatory pressure on the network. Pantera asserted that because the market did not waver even after several unsavory SEC reports about scam projects, this indicated a true bottom has been reached.

“One key thing to point out is recently there was some news about the SEC going after a couple scam projects and the fact that the market didn’t react negatively suggests we’ve reached a local, if not global bottom… Provided that nothing drastically changes over the course of the next few months on the regulation side, I think that we’ve seen the brunt of the market’s negative reaction to it,” the letter explained.

All of these notes support the Pantera team’s optimistic conclusion regarding Bitcoin. They boldly stated that the low of USD 6,500 would be the lowest point for the immediate timeframe and projected a USD 20,000 value for this time next year.

“The vast majority of the next 365 days will be above that price. It’s highly likely to have exceeded $20,000 within a year,” they said.

Pantera Capital is an investment firm focused exclusively on blockchain technology, emerging ventures and investments within the realm of cryptocurrency. It manages over USD 800,000 in assets.

The post Pantera Capital Shares Bullish Sentiment, Sees Bitcoin Above $20,000 appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

Taxation is an important aspect of the cryptocurrency industry. It is very much possible the taxation season effectively triggered the recent Bitcoin price decline. With these concerns almost gone, the markets are rebounding strongly. This yearly cycle will continue to repeat itself for the foreseeable future.

Taxation and the Bitcoin Price Sell-off

In recent months, the Bitcoin price declined by as much as 65% compared to late 2017. There are many different reasons as to why this has happened. One potential outcome is the taxation season. More specifically, people noted a lot more capital gains tax in 2017 than expected. Regardless of current market movements, these taxes still need to be paid

Doing so requires Bitcoin holders to sell more of their portfolio. Twice as much even, at the prices as of last week. It is only normal this will have a negative impact on the Bitcoin price as a whole. Taxation season is always a tough time for the cryptocurrency markets. Tax selling has been a very real thing for quite some time now, according to Blockchain Capital Spencer Bogart. He added:

“The tax selling has been a very real thing, and it has accelerated over the past couple of weeks. I’m not surprised as we get a bit closer to Tax Day that some of that pressure, that selling pressure, is starting to ease a bit.”

The Bitcoin Outlook for 2018

It is too early to determine if the taxation deadline is the only reason for 2018’s bear market. Pressure on Bitcoin has been mounting for several months now. With a strong bounce across all markets last night, people have high hopes again. The $8.000 price level could not be sustained, though, as the value fell below that threshold pretty quickly.

Other cryptocurrencies note similar positive momentum. Ethereum, Litecoin, and XRP are all heading back in the right direction. For now, there will be no rally on the same level as in late 2017. There is still too much bearish pressure across all markets to make solid gains day after day. Bogart confirmed the bear market is not be over by any means.

For now, it seems safe to assume Bitcoin is still one’s best bet in the search for legitimate digital currencies. Any ICO token is on the SEC’s radar and potentially subject to a crackdown. Bogart confirms Bitcoin is the only currency on the SEC’s “safe side”, for the time being. This can effectively lead to bigger Bitcoin price gains in the coming months. Setting a new all-time high in 2018 still remains very much possible.

Image from Shutterstock

The post Tax Season Blamed for Bitcoin Sell-off, Rebound Predicted appeared first on NewsBTC.

SBI Bank LLC, a commercial bank owned by Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings, is joining blockchain banking consortium R3.

Billionaire investor and tech pundit Tim Draper has predicted Bitcoin will be valued at USD 250,000 by 2022.

The prediction was made in his usual flamboyant Draper style to an enthusiastic audience in front of the Draper University of Heroes in San Mateo California.

During the short speech, Draper extolled the virtues of blockchain technology in today’s political and social environment, arguing that there is fast becoming a bilateral scenario between the “virtual world” and the “terrestrial” world. Draper maintained that “you can now be governed anywhere in the world” using blockchain technology, citing healthcare insurance, pensions and welfare as some of the elements which will benefit in the “virtual world” scenario.

Draper, a long-term exponent of Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology, has been consistent in his views regarding the virtual currency’s potential, maintaining that in five years, fiat currency will be a thing of the past and that there will be no more currencies linked to specific nations:

“In five years you’re going to walk in and try and pay fiat for a Starbucks coffee, and the barista is going to laugh at you because they’re going to say, “What is this? Are you counting out pennies? Give me shells?” “. He stated recently that other cryptocurrencies would fall away, leaving Bitcoin as the standard.

Healthcare as Draper pointed out, is increasingly becoming the focus of governments as blockchain is beginning to prove that it has potential to offer a more secure and accessible storage service than current analogue and electronic systems, many of which remain vulnerable to security breaches. A blockchain makes “the perfect bureaucrat”, according to Draper: “It’s honest, it’s straightforward, it’s incorruptible, it’s fair.”

Draper sees business being conducted far more differently in the future without the need of lawyers and accountants. Paying employees, raising money and budgeting will all be conducted through blockchain technology.

Draper’s predictions have been correct before. In January of 2017, he predicted a USD 10,000 bitcoin price by 2018. This turned out to be a rather conservative prediction after the digital currency surged well past his mark in November 2017.

The post Bitcoin $250K by 2022 Predicts Tech Investor Tim Draper appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

Bitcoin Press Release: Skycoin, a blockchain created by original developers of Bitcoin and Ethereum, is looking to address the faults found in previous blockchains.

April 09, 2018, Shanghai – Bitcoin looked great on the surface, with very noble ideals of bringing financial freedom to those who would not deal with traditional finance any longer or could not access the financial system. As the idea of cryptocurrencies started gaining traction, the scene expanded rapidly, and a new cryptocurrency was born that would usher in the start of “cryptocurrency 2.0”. This new cryptocurrency would serve as the launching point for hundreds of projects looking to make their way into the blockchain space. The second generation cryptocurrency was Ethereum.

Bitcoin and Ethereum, at their very core, are broken.

Bitcoin and Ethereum both employ the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm to achieve consensus on their networks. In a basic sense what this means is miners are in a race against each other to solve complex mathematical problems in order to verify that a network transaction has completed successfully. The “winner” gets paid for doing the work or proving the work, with the payment being a fraction of the total transaction amount.

Why is this a problem?

In Bitcoin’s early programming, there was a fundamental miscalculation that the mining process would produce an economic incentive structure conducive to decentralization. Instead, PoW has concentrated influence among mining pools that can operate the resource-intensive miners with cheap electrical power. These same influential groups can orchestrate widespread changes to the network with things such as soft forks. Satoshi Nakamoto identified mining control as the biggest non-cryptographic threat to the Bitcoin network, due to the possibility of 51% attacks when more than 50 percent of the hashing power is confined to one entity.

According to Energy Researcher Sebastiaan Deetman;

“If the bitcoin network keeps expanding…it could lead to a continuous electricity consumption…[equivalent to] the total consumption of…Denmark by 2020. The continuous consumption of electricity through the processing power required by mining incurs monthly costs in the tens of millions. There is little sustainability in this over the long-term.”

Enter Obelisk

Obelisk distributes influence over the network according to a web-of-trust architecture. Instead of miners, the network consists of nodes. These nodes are substantially less expensive to produce, acquire and operate than any traditional miner used to mine Bitcoin or Ethereum. Obelisk was designed to be a scalable and computationally-inexpensive alternative to PoW, enabling the algorithm to be run on budget hardware. Centralisation becomes nigh-impossible when virtually anyone is able to operate a node.

This web-of-trust consensus also prevents the development of centralized power. Skycoin does not rely on mining incentives, therefore it is not susceptible to a 51% attack. In addition, there is no reason for mining farms to start buying up thousands of computers to run Obelisk because there is no chance to take over the network and have complete influence. In addition, if one group did pool enough resources to disrupt the network, there would be little impact on network users as this type of takeover will be detected immediately and shut down.

Currently, the easiest way to operate an Obelisk node is to purchase a Skywire Miner or build a DIY version on your own. While running an Obelisk node itself does not produce monetary value, it does keep the Skycoin blockchain safe. When building a Skyminer, one can choose to contribute resources by operating nodes on the Skywire network and earn Skycoin (SKY) for those resources and bandwidth. Skywire is the decentralized peer-to-peer network that is incentivized through SKY. This incentivization mechanism gives Skycoin inherent value. Where Bitcoin’s value is derived by speculating on the value provided by the network in the future, Skycoin’s value is immediate and here as soon as Skywire testnet launches.

To learn more visit the Website : https://www.skycoin.net/

Telegram Bounty Channel: https://t.me/skycoinbounty
Read the White Paper – https://www.skycoin.net/whitepapers/
Chat with us on Telegram: https://t.me/Skycoin
Connect on Twitter – https://twitter.com/skycoinproject

Media Contact
Contact Name: Danish
Contact Email: [email protected]

Skycoin is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

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R3 is now proposing that its DLT platform, known as Corda, could link together a wide range of businesses, not just financial ones, across the globe.