Month: November 2017

The former chief economist of the World Bank wants bitcoin banned. “Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight,” Joseph Stigliz, currently a professor at Columbia University, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television today, as the cryptocurrency reached new all-time highs this week. Because of this, he added: “So it seems to me it ought to be outlawed. It doesn’t serve any socially useful function.” However, Stiglitz, who also chaired the U.S. President’s Council Read more …

Get Trading Recommendations and Read Analysis on Hacked.com for just $39 per month. The bitcoin price plunged by more than $1,300 in minutes during a flash crash on bitcoin exchange Bitfinex but has since recovered above $10,800. Bitcoin Price Flash Crashes to $10,075 At approximately 10:09 ET, the bitcoin jumped to a one-hour high of $11,399, which placed it just below the all-time high of $11,441 it had set at 9:13. Apparently — after observing resistance at $11,500 — a Read more …

Featured A rising tide floats all boats and a rising bitcoin inflates all domains. Stocks in graphics card manufacturers and crypto mining companies aren’t the only beneficiaries of the bitcoin bounce: BTC-themed web domains are also hot commodities. Sellers are asking hundreds of thousands of dollars for prime bitcoin domains, with some even priced into the millions. See also: Stay Safe By Keeping Your ‘Bitcoin Business’ to Yourself Bitcoin Enters the Public Domain The bitcoin brand has soared Read more …

Speaking on November 25 at BeyondBlock Taipei 2017, Ethereum inventor and co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined his vision for Ethereum 2.0. He described major changes in Ethereum’s architecture that are likely to be implemented over the next few years to improve Ethereum in terms of privacy, safety (consensus safety and smart contract safety) and, of course, scalability, which was the main focus of Buterin’s talk. Buterin doesn’t seem worried about competitors. “The Ethereum killer is Ethereum, the Ethereum of China is Ethereum, Read more …

Bitcoin steamed past the huge psychological barrier of $10,000 yesterday. Since then, it’s shown little sign of letting up. Less than 24 hours since it reached five-figures for the first time, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency continued on its rise topping out at around $11,500 on Wednesday afternoon. It has since retraced somewhat to around $11,000 at the time of writing. Of course, it wasn’t long before representatives of central banks passed comment on the historic moment of BTC reaching Read more …

A new fund-of-funds announced this week is aiming to raise up to $100 million via an initial coin offering (ICO). Called the Apex Token Fund, the key idea is that tokenization gives buyers a way to cash out their investment early on, without diminishing the underlying principle. Speaking exclusively to CoinDesk in a telephone call, Joseph Bradley, a fund co-founder, said: “The whole idea of applying a blockchain to this type of structure is it unlocks liquidity between the vintage and harvest date Read more …

Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, has announced the creation of a 100 million dollars hedge fund, which will be designated in XRP, Ripple’s native symbol. Arrington made the statement at the Consensus: Invest conference in New York, pointing out that the fund would be called Arrington XRP Capital. Significantly, investors will buy fund shares and receive allocations in XRP, the native currency of the Ripple Consensus Ledger (RCL) and the fourth most significant cryptocurrency per-market cap. One year ago, Read more …

The first publically accessible marketplace for IoT (Internet of Things) has been launched this week. Berlin-based crypto startup IOTA has partnered with Microsoft, Fujitsu and twenty other companies including Bosch and Accenture to develop a blockchain solution to data monetization via internet-connected devices. Analysts predict that business-to-business spending on IoT technologies and solutions will reach $267 billion by 2020. More and more devices will create a near-endless stream of data, and the market for data-driven insights is being eyed as a catalyst for IoT growth. The initiative Read more …

Get Trading Recommendations and Read Analysis on Hacked.com for just $39 per month. The $6.831 trillion stock market Nasdaq, the world’s second-largest stock exchange behind New York Stock Exchange, will enable bitcoin futures trading by mid-2018. Nasdaq and Cantor to Integrate Bitcoin by First Half of 2018 A Wall Street Journal report revealed that Nasdaq and Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. will list bitcoin futures within the first half of 2018. The two financial institutions are “rushing” the integration of bitcoin Read more …

It was a historic week for the cryptocurrency markets. Driving the 10,000 USD Bitcoin price, a coin and chip count of recordings has registered record levels, and – despite worries that the charts are heating up too fast – the rally should not show signs of slowing. Bitcoin entered the middle of the week with a vengeance, and the cryptocurrency market capped a 24-hour surge of 26.2 billion dollars. At present, the total cryptocurrency cap is 334.3 billion dollars. I Read more …

China’s crypto exchanges may be violating financial regulations by facilitating peer-to-peer trading between Chinese yuan and cryptocurrencies. At least that’s according to commentators on China Central Television (CCTV), who, in a segment that aired on its Financial Channel this week, discussed the volatility of bitcoin and its recent rally above $10,000. Citing a notable growth of China’s OTC trading as one possible reason behind the surge, the program went on to raise concerns about the practice. As an illustration, a screen capture of Huobi Read more …