April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Convergex Group Chief market Strategist Nick Colas doscusses trhe future for Bitcoin. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's "Lunch Money." (Source: Bloomberg)
They’re creepy, confusing, and skyrocketing in value. Who wouldn’t want to buy some bitcoins? Winston Ross checks out the online currency everyone’s buzzing about.
I first heard about the online currency known as Bitcoin on Monday, when a friend from Facebook who has the distinction of being the only person in my life ever to have punched me in the nose posted this, as his status update:
“Who out there (1) uses Bitcoin and (2) reads my status updates?”
I scored a 50 percent on that little quiz, which I have since learned is proof that I live under a boulder. I’m no Buzz Bissinger, but the idea that some newfangled way to spend money had come into being without me knowing about it was a huge shock, from which it took two full days to recover. On Wednesday morning, having finally yanked myself from bed/depression, I decided I would make bitcoin my bitch.
I’m late to this party, I know. Bitcoins have been around since 2009, and they’re booming. The price for a single coin jumped from $35 to $145 in the past month alone, and there are $1.6 billion worth of bitcoins in circulation worldwide. The whole point is basically to sidestep the banking industry—and government, for that matter. Which doesn’t seem like a terrible idea, at least not after seeing a bunch of people in Cyprus recently pulling money out of their banks before Big Brother could reach in and seize some of it to allay the country’s financial crisis.
Even now, I cannot begin to tell you exactly how the whole bitcoin system works, but I do know it’s virtual money, supposedly kept safe by a clever encryption scheme. People say the booming market for bitcoins is a bubble waiting to burst. I think bubbles are fun.
So I am now going to embark on a bitcoin spending spree, while writing about it in real time. This is history in the making, people.
First I need some bitcoins. But before I can even buy them, I need to download an app from the Bitcoin website called “bitcoin Qt,” which either means “bitcoin Cutie” or bitcoin Q.T. (as in, “quiet tip or “down low,” perhaps.) My computer refuses to recognize the app. Ten minutes and 35 increasingly furious clicks later, I finally get my computer to open the app.
Well that was reassuring, weird scammy cryptic online currency company. Now how do I buy the coins?
Bitcoin itself is no help at all. On the “how it works” page I have discovered the worst infographic in the history of infographics. There are three people-shaped shadows, one with a question mark on it, “you” in the middle, and a “friend” on the right. Then there’s a weird box with some ellipses and other random numbers like “1sd9” and it’s all called “The Blockchain (a shared public transaction log”). - Read more here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/04/my-bitcoin-mis-adventure.html
After the bad news last week that Butterfly Labs missed their power estimates for the new range of BitForce SC ASIC bitcoin miners and the underperforming glance Luke-Jr showed us of an actual device hashing Butterfly Labs has shocked the bitcoin mining industry by altering their entire product line.
The BitForce Jalapeno that was to do 4.5 GH/s and cost $149.00 will be replaced with a 5 GH/S Bitcoin Miner for $274.00.
The BitForce Little Single 30 GH/s Miner for $649.00 will now be a 25 GH/S Bitcoin Miner costing $1,249.00.
Finally The BitForce Single 60 GH/s for $1,299.00 is replaced with 50 GH/S Bitcoin Miner for $2,499.00.
Unfortunately the BitForce Mini Rig for 1,500 costing $29,899.00 is now marked as out of stock and has no replacement at present.
I have not been able to find out what will happen to people with ‘pre-orders’ as of yet (some going back a full eight months) but when I find out, I will update this article. - http://mineforeman.com/2013/04/05/butterfly-labs-increases-prices-and-decreases-hash-rates-on-the-asic-bitcoin-mining-devices
There is a bitcoin craze at the moment, with prices of bitcoin skyrocketing. Bitcoin is still far from ready for prime time, but as it matures, it will change society’s fundamental operations much more than the Internet did. The net, after all, only allowed people to talk and shop more efficiently. By comparison, bitcoin eradicates the government’s ability to operate.
Let’s begin by looking at what a bitcoin is. It is money. It is a new form of money that isn’t issued by a government. Governments don’t have a monopoly on coming up with things you can trade and barter with, and bitcoin is one such non-governmental barter instrument. The difference between bitcoin and all other such tokens of value that have been invented over the years is that nobody is in control of the money supply, and nobody is in control of the money flow. This means that nobody can start the printing presses to eradicate your savings, and nobody can seize or see your wealth or income. You can think of it as an open-source currency compared to proprietary, state-issued currencies.
There is no central bank. This is a revolutionary concept. People can trade cash at a distance without going through an intermediary. The first time you send the value of a cup of coffee to a friend in India on a Sunday, without any transaction fees, and they have the money instantly, without anybody but you knowing of the transaction, your jaw drops.
This would have been but a curiosity, if it weren’t for the ridiculously strong business case to cut banks and credit card processors out of the sales loop for corporations, which could roughly double the profits in retail sales. This means that there’s a very strong force for universal uptake of this new currency.
As nobody is in control of the money supply (it is set to grow predictably at a slowing rate until 2140), and demand increases with a limited supply, the price for each bitcoin increases. This is what we’re seeing now, as more and more people realize bitcoin’s business potential. Also, there is value in the concept that you don’t have to trust any single person to store or to transfer bitcoin – not your government, not your bank, not Western Union – is something completely new. - Read more here: http://falkvinge.net/2013/04/03/why-bitcoin-is-poised-to-change-society-much-more-than-the-internet-did/
Pyramining.com - I just tested this bitcoin mining service. You can rent hashing power for a great return. It's a great way to do Bitcoin mining if you don't have needed machinery to do mining yourself. There is also network marketing aspect in this. You can increase your bonus by getting more people onboard. The more you get referrals, the higher your bonus will be. In Pyramining website you can see Hall of Fame list and awesome bonus percentages like 5747.4% - Nice! Anything from 0.1 BTC and up can get you in, but the best mining results comes from 5 BTC and up. More you invest - more you get back! Highly recommended service :) You should definetely use me as referral - I have deposited 7.5 BTC (Now its like 140 USD / BTC = total = 1050 USD) for this great thingie, and will be adding more in the future. All is One - One is All - Everyone will benefit from this! All get their payements when being patience.In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss both the Dow and bitcoin hitting an all time high as the Fed continues to print $85 billion per month for Wall Street handouts whilst the sequester cuts $85 billion from services to the poor, the elderly and soldiers. They also talk about house prices tripling to all time highs in Hong Kong (thanks to quantitative easing) whilst 'surreal' ghost cities are built in mainland China but which nobody can afford and about how incomes in America are collapsing - thanks to quantitative easing. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to Charles Hugh Smith of OfTwoMinds.com about both socialism and capitalism leading to debtism.
If you're like most people, you've probably been hearing a bit about "Bitcoin" recently.
And, if you're like most people, you'll probably not know what it is or what to think about it--or what the fuss is all about.
Here's a snapshot.
Bitcoin is an electronic currency--a new form of money.
Bitcoins take the form of strings of numbers that can be electronically owned by and transferred among individuals and organizations. For now, the currency is primarily used for payments by fringe retailers or illegal transactions, but it is being accepted at more and more places. And organizations that exchange Bitcoins for standard currency are now being approved to operate as banks.
The premise and promise of Bitcoin--the part that appeals to folks who don't happen to be gold bugs or cryptography geeks--is that the current plan is for only a finite number of Bitcoins to be created. This is in direct contrast to standard government-issued currencies, which governments can always print more of. If the supply of Bitcoins remains finite, this should theoretically eliminate inflation, which is one of the biggest drawbacks of paper money.
(Although inflation has remained low in recent years, it ravages the value of paper money over time. A dollar in 1900 is only worth about $0.04 in today's currency.)
So Bitcoin is conceptually very interesting, especially since it is not issued by a government agency.
What has suddenly grabbed the public's attention about Bitcoin, however, is the recent explosion in the value of the currency.
Because the number of Bitcoins is limited, their value increases rapidly when more people want them. And when the value of something increases rapidly, more people want it because they see it as a means of making money. So the initial price increases fuel future price increases which fuel more future price increases...at least for a while.
This dynamic has fueled the inflation of every asset bubble in history. And they have all ended badly. So it behooves people to analyze the sustainability of such price increases carefully.
When Bitcoin was launched in 2010, the currency initially had very little value. Quickly, however, the price of each "coin" soared above $25, making the initial Bitcoin believers rich. Then prices collapsed, with coins trading down to $5 again, making Bitcoin adherents into fools. Then Bitcoin prices began a slow and steady rise that has suddenly gone parabolic.
At the beginning of last month Bitcoins could be exchanged for about $35.
Now they're changing hands at above $90.
This explosive price increase has many intelligent people crying "bubble!"
And these intelligent people may well be right.
But if there's one lesson that gets repeated again and again in bubbles, it's that prices can rise much higher and bubbles can last much longer than most observers think.
Internet stocks, for example, were first described as a "bubble" in 1995, a full five years before the peak. And the amount of money made in those next five years made everyone who was skeptical early on look and feel like a fool. House prices, meanwhile, were described as a "bubble" as early as 2002 and 2003. And it wasn't until 2007, many years later, that house prices finally peaked.
Driving prices in all bubbles, of course, is the possibility that the price action might not actually be a bubble.
That applies to Bitcoin, too.
If Bitcoins become an accepted currency everywhere in the world, if governments don't make Bitcoin transactions illegal, and if the supply of Bitcoins remains finite (if the systems aren't hacked or the anonymous creators don't get greedy and decide to create many more), then Bitcoin prices could go much, much higher. - Read more here: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/bitcoin-prices-blast-100-driving-speculators-wild-150415225.html
Who invented Bitcoin?
Given that the crypto-currency's value has skyrocketed in recent weeks thanks to the crisis in Europe and a spate of good publicity, you'd think we'd know the answer.
But the identity of its creator — or creators — remains one of the Internet's great mysteries.
Recap: Introduced in 2009, Bitcoin is really just a series of decrypted code that's been cracked by super-industrial computers (the "brute force" required to process the code can take weeks to achieve).
Today, Maria Bustillos writes on the New Yorkers' new tech page, "Elements," that it's widely agreed Bitcoin emanated from an individual calling himself Satoshi Nakamoto.
Until his disappearance from the Web, around the spring of 2012, Nakamoto was a visible participant on cryptography forums, where he discussed Bitcoin freely, and published a nine-page paper outlining the details of the project. These posts reveal that even in 2008, Nakamoto was able to respond to concerns regarding the scalability of bitcoin with remarkable prescience; he clearly understood the ramp-up of computing power that would be required for producing bitcoins as the system grew.
But there's near universal consensus that "Satoshi Nakamoto" doesn't exist. Instead, a worldwide guessing game has sprung up over who's behind the Nakamoto handle.
In 2009, the New Yorker's Joshua Davis set out to answer the question, and may have come close. He narrowed it down to a man named Michael Clear, a grad student at Trinity College, Dublin who'd been named the school's top computer science student as an undergrad. Davis noted Nakamoto's Bitcoin treatises included numerous Britishisms. Among Clear's achievements, Davis says:
He was hired by Allied Irish Banks to improve its currency-trading software, and he co-authored an academic paper on peer-to-peer technology. The paper employed British spelling. Clear was well versed in economics, cryptography and peer-to-peer networks.
Davis eventually forces Clear to say, "I'm not [Nakamoto], but even if I was I wouldn't tell you."
Clear later denied on his personal website — since taken down — that he was Nakamoto. And there is now no real trace of him on the Internet. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/who-created-bitcoin-2013-4
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the elbowed dreams and broken markets that continue to apparently thrive while a hedge fund managers advice for young people is 'get a job' (in a hollowed-out wasteland of an economy) and 'save for retirement' (with the same banks that have stolen trillions from the global investor). In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to entrepreneur and inventor, William Mook, about a near future when bitcoin means banks will not even be needed and 3D printing makes factories obsolete but a present day in which financial wise guys have stopped investing in the economy because there is no fuel supply to support the growth.
The rise of bitcoin, an electronic currency traded on an online exchange, has generated a media frenzy. Once scoffed at, its value has risen by 631% (denominated in dollars) since the start of 2013.
Lots of people think that means we’re in a bitcoin bubble and it will eventually pop. But if you’re one of these bitcoin bears, the company doesn’t make it easy for you to “short” it—i.e., bet that its value will go down.
The usual way to short a currency is to use a currency pair—something like EUR/USD, the value of a euro denominated in dollars—which trades as a single unit. For example, if the euro was trading at $1.3000, you would “borrow” a currency pair from your broker, which you have to return within a certain period of time, and sell it on the open market, pocketing $1.30. If after an hour EUR/USD is trading at $1.2950, you can buy the currency pair at that price and return it to your broker, making a profit of $0.0050. (If you’re wrong, you lose out.)
Most of the exchanges which allow you to trade bitcoins, however, don’t currently offer anything like currency pairs, nor any other futures or derivatives. Which means you would have to amass a stock of actual bitcoins to bet on them. That gets expensive.
One day, if bitcoin becomes well established, institutional foreign exchange dealers could make markets in bitcoins. (Among the current obstacles: There are only 11 million bitcoins in existence, and there can never be more than 21 million, so it’s not a very liquid market. If a way ever emerges to break bitcoins up into small fractions, that might solve the problem.) But for those looking to short bitcoins right now, there are two notable ways to do it:
Bitfinex: A Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange based in Hong Kong, Bitfinex allows ordinary bitcoin holders to act like brokers and lend bitcoins to people who want to trade them. The exchange does a lot of this automatically.
ICBIT: ICBIT allows traders to make bets using futures—financial contracts in which a buyer agrees to buy a security, in this case a bitcoin, at a future date at a predetermined price. Futures contracts can be bought and sold, so you can make money without buying the actual bitcoins themselves. This platform will also let you trade commodities, such as oil, in bitcoins.
Still, do you really want to short bitcoins? The market is still pretty volatile, and because it’s an unfamiliar mix of currency and equity, it’s likely to stay that way for a while. Remarks Cullen Roche, the founder of Orcam Financial Group, “You’d probably be better off just going to Vegas though. You’ll have more fun, about the same odds, and the drinks in the casino will be free.” - http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-short-bitcoins-if-you-really-must-2013-4
On March 16th, the Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, who’d been in office for about a month, announced a strategy to solve the country’s banking crisis. This plan, which would be funded in part by confiscating money directly from every single bank account in Cyprus—even the very smallest—met with instantaneous and violent opposition from the country’s citizens. Offstage, the European Union, led by a group of adamant Germans, Finns, and Danes, as well as the I.M.F. and the European Central Bank, pointed a cannon at Anastasiades’s head: if he didn’t move forward with this plan, the Cyprus banks would go bust and their hapless customers would lose pretty much all their money, instead of a measly 6.75 per cent. However, under great pressure from their constituents, Cypriot M.P.s rejected the proposal and sent Anastasiades back to the drawing board.
The following Monday, the price of the decentralized electronic currency bitcoin rose from forty-five to fifty-five dollars on the major exchanges, and by Wednesday it had nipped up to sixty-five dollars. The financial media generally agreed that the two dramas are related. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, it appears that Spaniards are liable to have been particularly active buyers of bitcoins that week, having taken the debacle in Cyprus as the likely sign of a forthcoming governmental plunder of their own savings. The evidence coming out of Spain is circumstantial—a spike in Google searches for “bitcoin,” and another on mobile-app downloads of Bitcoin-related software were widely reported—but the pieces appear to fit. Subsequent developments (including the announcement of an eleventh-hour bailout deal for Cyprus) have so far failed to stabilize the euro or cool the bitcoin fever, with the price over a hundred and three at the time of writing.
That a number of panicked Europeans appear to have reckoned the wildly volatile, vulnerable, and tiny bitcoin market a preferable alternative to their own banking system, even temporarily, signals a serious widening of the cracks between the northern and southern E.U. countries in the wake of the euro-zone debt crisis. It also illustrates the broader collapse of trust that is threatening the world of global banking and fiat money.
The weakness in existing currencies stems from lack of faith in institutions—particularly central banks, which are often in league with commercial and investment banks. When a government bails out a failed bank or insurance company—in essence, by printing money—the net effect is that the currency as a whole is debased, in favor of a few and at the literal expense of everyone else, which amounts to a fair description of today’s global financial system. Hence the sudden appeal of bitcoins, which appear, for the moment, at least, to be immune to the machinations of inept or crooked bankers and politicians.
* * *
In many ways, bitcoins function essentially like any other currency, and are accepted as payment by a growing number of merchants, both online and in the real world. But they are generated at a predetermined rate by an open-source computer program, which was set in motion in January of 2009. This program produced each one of the nearly eleven million bitcoins in circulation (with a total value just over a billion dollars at the current rate of exchange), and it runs on a massive peer-to-peer network of some twenty thousand independent nodes, which are generally very powerful (and expensive) G.P.U. or ASIC computer systems optimized to compete for new bitcoins. (Standards vary, but there seems to be a consensus forming around Bitcoin, capitalized, for the system, the software, and the network it runs on, and bitcoin, lowercase, for the currency itself.)
Bitcoin releases a twenty-five-coin reward to the first node in the network that succeeds in solving a difficult mathematical problem requiring a certain amount of brute-force computation (known as a proof-of-work calculation.) The solution is then broadcast throughout the network, and competition for a new block and its twenty-five-coin reward begins. (There’s a good rundown of the technical aspects of Bitcoin on the Bitcoin wiki; there’s also a wonderfully pellucid explanation of the proof-of-work angle from Paul Bohm, on Quora.) - Read more here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/the-future-of-bitcoin.html
Last week, we questioned the legitimacy of a story that a company planned to install a Bitcoin ATM in Cyprus.
Jeff Berwick, the man behind The Dollar Vigilante and founder of StockHouse.com, had posted an announcement saying the following:
I have decided to move forward with what I believe could be the next multi-billion dollar business venture: Bitcoin ATM....It is wholly our intention at Bitcoin ATM to put the company in the right position to open its very first ATM in Cyprus. If we did this now, and we are moving quickly to make this so, we would be the only functioning ATM on the island.
We tried for two days to get in touch with someone at The Dollar Vigilante, to no avail.
But Berwick has now responded via email to our contentions.
Here is his response in full, as he framed it, with his cuts from our original story in quotes:
BUSINESS INSIDER — “The project premise is based on the notion that Cyprus' banking sector would cease to function and that a Bitcoin ATM would save the day. And yet the Cyprus banking system is functioning again, and ATMs have been functioning the whole time.”
JEFF BERWICK – This is not the project’s premise. The history is we bought the original ATM machine which has been being developed by a young man for the last two years a few months ago. It could only accept cash and not dispense cash, though, so we developed it to the point that it is now a fully bi-directional ATM (btc-cash and cash-btc). We finished that and had our first working model ready and we wanted to announce it was ready and we wanted to announce where we would put the first one. We looked around the world and just decided Cyprus made a lot of sense since the banking system has been all but shutdown for the last two weeks. We now have orders for 300+ machines in 30+ countries and are moving quickly to handle the demand.
BI — "The Bitcoin ATM page is extremely vague and says it's seeking investors/partners, which means there's no actual product yet.”
JB — Yes, the page is a work in progress but just because we are seeking investors/partners doesn’t mean there is no actual product. We have the product ready and we may actually install one asap in Los Angeles (where our operations are) just to show the world it works. We are seeking investors to help fund our expansion as we are completely swamped with orders and interest and need to hire many people to keep up with demand. We will be closing a first round of investment, like somewhere between $1-3 million in the next few weeks and already have more than that ready from serious investors.
BI — “Another alarm bell for us is that while Berwick boasts of StockHouse.com's large market cap at the height of the tech bubble, he says he sold it in 2002.”
JB — That is all 100% true and verifiable. I don’t see the problem here. - Check out whole article and prototype images here: http://www.businessinsider.com/cyprus-bitcoin-atm-guy-responds-2013-4
SocGen currency analyst Sebastien Galy has just received his first request for analysis on Bitcoin, the red-hot digital currency that's become the obsession of the media and parts of the internet.In an email to Business Insider, Galy says he's been besieged with questions from journalists in recent weeks, but that his first actual client inquired about an hour ago.
So anyway, Galy felt obliged to email some comments about valuing Bitcoins, and where they could be going.
Here are some of his comments:
Bitcoins have a money supply that is theoretically increasing following an algorithm approximating the effort of mining. With far more rapid advances in the technology of processing than mining, the rules have already been changed to stop some form of mining. This is effectively a form of revaluation of the currency.
“Monetary Approach” - One way to value bitcoins would be to compare the money supply of the US vs bitcoins. That simplistic approach would make bitcoins very valuable if they end up being able to buy the same USD asset. This is a supply approach and easily insolvable.
...
Techinicals - From a trading point of view, we broke out of the upward trending channel in an exponential upswing typical of aggressive bubbles. As all bubbles there is a good story behind it, the trick would be to measure both the supply side and more importantly demand side value of bitcoins. - http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-analyst-on-bitcoin-2013-4
It's illegal to make your own money in the United States, but that doesn't mean the feds will shut down the digital currency bitcoin anytime soon, financial services lawyer Dan Friedberg tells us.
That's because the feds don't consider bitcoin — a virtual currency that's being used around the globe — to be "tender," or official bills or coins that look like they've been issued by the U.S. government. Instead, it's considered "virtual currency."
The federal government made that distinction clear in a recent announcement that it was applying money-laundering rules to bitcoin and other virtual currencies.
The Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) didn't mention bitcoin by name, but the new rules applied to "convertible decentralized virtual currency" exactly like bitcoin, Friedberg says.
Bitcoin enthusiasts were a little on edge before FinCEN issued its notice.
"This is a a very new area, and you really never know how the Treasury Department is going to react," Friedberg says.
Here's what Friedberg had to say in an email message:
"Prior to the FinCEN release, a significant concern was that the US government might assert that bitcoin constitutes illegal tender. Indeed, the United States Constitution delegates to Congress the exclusive power to mint coin within the United States to insure a singular monetary system for purchases and debits. The Department of Treasury therefore could have taken the position that bitcoin constitutes an illegal competing currency that violates this fundamental constitutional power, but chose not to do so. Instead, FinCEN distinguished a 'virtual currency' from a 'real currency,' and noted that a 'virtual currency lacks all the real attributes of real currency.'"
It's possible that the federal government is letting bitcoin stick around because it's not much of a threat to U.S. currency. Right now, bitcoin's only worth about $1 billion compared to the $1.18 trillion in U.S. currency that's in circulation.
Bitcoin is also relatively unstable, Internet law attorney Mike Young points out.
"If Bitcoin exchange rates stabilize, and the digital currency becomes preferred overthe U.S. Dollar at some point, that would be the probable tipping point for banning it within the United States," Young tells us.
For now, bitcoin is able to exist in part because it's in the "gray area" of international currency that's based overseas, according to Young.
"If Bitcoin were purely a U.S. domestic currency," Young says, "it would have been shut down a long time ago." - http://www.businessinsider.com/is-bitcoin-legal-2013-4
FXstreet.com (Barcelona) - Sebastien Galy, Senior FX Strategist at Societe Generale has caved into popular demand and taken a look at the fledgling bitcoin market.
He begins by noting that Bitcoins have a money supply that is theoretically increasing following an algorithm approximating the effort of mining. With far more rapid advances in the technology of processing than mining, the rules have already been changed to stop some form of mining, which is effectively a form of revaluation of the currency.
In terms of monetary approach, one way to value bitcoins would be to compare the money supply of the US to bitcoins. However, that simplistic approach would make bitcoins very valuable if they end up being able to buy the same USD asset. He feels that this is a supply approach and easily insolvable.
Looking at the Law of One Price approach, on the demand side a dollar is used to purchase say a piece of software or game tokens within a game or to pay someone for watching a video. This is where the reality meets the rubber. He writes, “As far as I can see within a game, the value the bitcoin is devalued as games introduce their own tokens (e.g. Metal storm has now three different levels of tokens depending on whether it is externally tradable, internally..).” If the bitcoin becomes too expensive it loses its usefulness as a numeraire used for exchange.
In terms of legal framework, from a technical point of view, the bitcoin is not yet a currency in the sense that the currency is not anonymous. Volume is low and hence it is easy to influence the price. He adds that there is no certainty that the supply of bitcoins will follow the original rules as these rules have already been changed and presume a trust in the ones able to issue the currency. In many countries, printing money is a state privilege that will come to bit in the future as this, like gambling is regulated for good reasons.
From a technical perspective, he writes, “From a trading point of view, we broke out of the upward trending channel in an exponential upswing typical of aggressive bubbles. As all bubbles there is a good story behind it, the trick would be to measure both the supply side and more importantly demand side value of bitcoins.” - http://www.fxstreet.com/news/forex-news/article.aspx?storyid=5563c5e7-c344-4b98-8eef-17e5727e0b18
A week ago, BitPay CEO Tony Gallippi announced that his payment processing service had set a new record: a transaction volume of $2 million in the first twenty five days of March. Now, however, Gallippi has revealed that the popular Bitcoin payment processor has eclipsed that figure yet again, and in a third of the time – leading to a new record high transaction volume of 5.2 million dollars for the month of March.
BitPay’s growth in the past month has been very rapid; in February, Gallippi reports, the company only processed a total of $687,000 from 2,300 completed invoices. In March, the transaction volume of $5.2 million comes from 5,100 completed invoices, and the company also added 1,300 new merchants, raising their total to 4,500 as of the end of the month. Although it cannot be said for certain, the figure also likely places the total aggregate of BitPay merchant sales above those processed by the Silk Road, the notorious online black market for illegal drugs that uses Tor and Bitcoin, combined with a proprietary mixing service, to ensure that both the internet connections and the payments of its users remain anonymous.
The site was last estimated to have a volume of $2 million by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in August 2012, and since then the one public statistic released by Silk Road – the number of users and posts on its forum, has increased by about 50-100%, suggesting a current volume of around $3 million to $5 million. From a public relations standpoint, this is a positive sign for Bitcoin: the legal Bitcoin economy is now almost certainly larger than the illegal one, especially when one takes other merchant services like WalletBit/BIPS and Coinbase into consideration, and is growing at a much faster rate.
Gallippi suggests several reasons that may be the driving factors behind BitPay’s sudden surge in volume. First of all, on March 25 the company lowered transaction fees for merchants receiving their revenue as bank deposits from 2.69% to 0.99%, making the round-trip process of buying Bitcoin (1.00% flat fee at Coinbase), sending it to a merchant and having the merchant convert the bitcoins back into fiat even cheaper than the 2.90% fee charged by Visa and MasterCard. And some merchants are even passing on the savings; “with our recent reduction in fees, our merchants are using our all-inclusive 0.99% fee to offer discounts to their customers for paying in bitcoin,” Gallippi writes. - Read more here: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitpay-processes-5-million-in-march-eclipses-silk-road/
Bitcoins — the stateless currency maintained by a network of math-problem-solving PCs — has spiked in value since financial crisis struck Cyprus. But are Bitcoins really worth all that? Or do they just provide an object lesson in how quickly trust in a country’s economic system can ebb and flow?I first encountered Bitcoins back in June 2011. Back then, there was $130 million worth of this weightless virtual currency and its value had spiked 6,000% in the first six months of the year when each one was worth $30. Since then, the ”market capitalization” of the 10,952,975 Bitcoins in circulation has soared to $864 million and they trade at $100 a piece, according to BusinessWeek.In 2011, Bitcoins were not very widely accepted. You could use them to buy alpaca socks, organic gardening services, a Bitcoin merit badge from NerdMeritBadge.com, and some technology products. And if Senator Charles let Schumer was to be believed, Bitcoins were also a popular way to buy illegal drugs through Silk Road.On March 20, according to the BBC, a Canadian homeowner, Taylor More, listed his two-bedroom Alberta bungalow for 7,054 Bitcoins — then-worth $56. Heck, you can even use Bitcoins to buy pizza, reports the BBC.Bitcoins are a peer-to-peer currency named after the file-sharing technology, Bittorrent. Rather than banks and governments issuing Bitcoins, a network of Bitcoin holders’ computers does the heavy lifting. Touted as untraceable, Bitcoins are heaven on earth for libertarians and others who dream of a global economy outside the control of governments.A mysterious programmer going by “Satoshi Nakamoto” started Bitcoins in 2009 and after he disappeared in 2010, an Amherst, Mass.-based programmer, Gavin Andresen took over the project.And since crisis erupted in Cyprus, the value of Bitcoins have soared. And why not? The crisis in Cyprus led to a spike in fear about the risk in government-run currencies. As the New York Times reports, the genesis of that fear was Cyprus’s policy of accepting few-questions-asked cash and charging companies an ultra-low 10% tax.Cash flooded Cyprus from around Europe — a third came from Russian oligarchs. And those deposits turned into loans. According to the Times, a bank would give a a £20,000 loan and a £5,000 credit card to a depositor with a monthly salary of £400. Much of this money went into real estate that soared in price.And while the 2010 Euro-recession took much of the wind out of Cyprus’s real estate market, it was the purchase of Greek government bonds by Cypriot banks that caused its banking system to collapse. - Read more here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/04/02/are-bitcoins-safer-than-cyprus/
Using Bitcoin to launder all the cash from your illegal dealings just got a little harder. The United States Treasury Department just enacted new rules to regulate Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, making it subject to the same level of scrutiny as other forms of currency. That's bad news for anyone looking to launder money using Bitcoin, but it could be good news for proponents of virtual currency for legitimate purposes.
The new rules will see Bitcoin regulated like Western Union. Little is expected to change for individuals trading in Bitcoins, but businesses will be required to keep more detailed records of the transactions. There will also now be a rule that any transactions over $10,000 must be reported.
The measures are aimed at stopping illegal activity like money laundering done with virtual currency. But as Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik points out, "I think it's inevitable that just like you have U.S. dollars used by thieves and criminals, it's sadly inevitable you will have criminals use a virtual currency. We want to work with authorities."
Just because some criminals use Bitcoin, does not mean it's a criminal empire. Although the new rules should make it harder to use things like Bitcoin for illicit activity, having the Treasury department regulating it should make supporters of virtual currency happy to see that it's getting a level legitimacy it didn't have before. - http://mashable.com/2013/03/23/bitcoin-regulatio/
Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr has reported that he received the first Butterfly Labs ASIC to reach the hands of consumers. The device is still far from full capacity, pushing out only 25 GH/s at a power consumption of 180 watts, but this is nevertheless the first definitive proof that Butterfly Labs is producing a legitimate product, and is not too far from finally releasing its first batch.
Butterfly Labs’ Josh Zerlan also recently provided updates on the state of Butterfly Labs’ production in an IRC channel. The core of the conversation is this:
BFL_Josh: Well guys, I had planned on updating everyone with a video of a board hashing here in KC tonight, but I haven’t been able to get that together yet, so I’m probably going to have to push it off until tomorrow. We are targeting a start of shipment next week, but I’m not quite ready to commit to that at the moment, given our past estimates. It’s imminent, though.Lab_Rat: It hashes????BFL_Josh: Yes, it hashes
Further down in the conversation, Zerlan provides the main reasons for the current delay. Zerlan writes: “We may miss our power targets, that’s been part of the hold up… we think there’s a problem with the power consumption and we’re trying to figure out where it’s having an issue … What’s causing even more consternation is the fact that the wafer we burned for tests runs at far less power than a second wafer we mounted on the BGA package… so it may be a wafer by wafer thing, and since we only have two datapoints, it’s hard to nail down the issue.” To many in the field, these difficulties are unsurprising; in mid-January, Avalon founder Yifu Guo wrote on the topic “recently they changed it to 1.2W, but they won’t even reach that. We ran 65nm simulations and they should be around 3W.” But to many of Butterfly Labs’ customers, who have now suffered from six months of delays, power consumption does not even matter; given that every extra day represents a lost opportunity for profit that will never come back, almost any level of power consumption is acceptable if it means that the devices will ship faster.
Butterfly Labs’ shipment has been awaited by the community for nearly ten months; the company was in fact the first to start accepting pre-orders in June 2012. Although the original shipping date was scheduled for October, the company suffered a number of delays that changed their expected shipping date first to late November, then early January, then mid-February and finally where it is today. In the meantime two other major ASIC producers, Avalon and ASICMiner, have also started hashing, and are partially responsible for raising the network hashpower from 20 TH/s to 55 TH/s over the past three months (the other contributing factor being the rapidly increasing BTC price). However, the community is still watching Butterfly Labs intently for one key reason: its potential hashpower. Although the output of Avalon and ASICMiner has been small, with Avalon’s first release being 20 TH/s and ASICMiner’s launch 12 TH/s, Butterfly Labs’ preorders altogether make up over 60 TH/s – more than is currently on the entire Bitcoin network. - Read more here: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-developer-receives-first-butterfly-labs-asic/
Mt. Gox handles 76 percent of global Bitcoin trading, which is why it’s taking the lead on regulatory compliance
The virtual currency Bitcoin isn’t backed by any assets or central authority. It’s only three years old and its exact origin is a mystery. And yet, for some reason, tens of thousands of people have determined that a single Bitcoin — essentially a unique sequence of letters and numbers — hit $105 US dollars earlier today, the most in its short history. At a time when the euro seems increasingly unstable, financial publications like Businessweek are asking if Bitcoin may the world’s last economic safe haven.
In the early days of Bitcoin, the price was decided by a small community of users who traded the currency on forums. Today users use real-world currencies ranging from the US dollar to the Polish zloty to buy Bitcoin on real-time exchanges. These exchanges determine Bitcon’s price based on what people are willing to pay. The largest of these exchanges, by far, is Mt. Gox.
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"If you want to buy Bitcoins, you need to find someone you can trust."
Mt. Gox is based in a highrise office building in Tokyo’s hip Shibuya district. Right now, it’s processing about 76 percent of all Bitcoin currency trades around the world, which translates to around $6 million worth of Bitcoin trades per day. That means roughly $60,000 in revenue for the tiny company, minus salaries for its 18 employees, as well as the costs of site maintenance and fees paid to financial regulators.
Mt. Gox serves as a reliable middleman that facilitates trades between users, just like a foreign exchange. "Bitcoin is a large economy, [and even though] people want to buy Bitcoins, it’s hard to directly find someone who has got whatever you want," explained CEO Mark Karpeles. "If you want to buy Bitcoins, you need to find someone you can trust."
And as the promise of a utopian one-world internet currency endures, Mt. Gox is becoming a liaison between the neo-cypherpunk Bitcoin community and governments around the world. - Read more here: http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/1/4154500/mt-gox-barons-of-bitcoin
Is Bitcoin the new gold?
Some former gold bugs certainly think so.
And its value has skyrocketed in recent months.
Last week, Bloomberg.com columnist Paul Ford opined they could now be the world's last currency safe haven.
But many readers at this point are probably wondering ... what exactly is Bitcoin?
Robert McNally, an iOS developer at parking payment startup QuickPay, gave the following presentation to last year's Hackers' Conference (don't worry, they were the "good" kind of hackers) in Santa Cruz, answering exactly that question.
With his kind permission, we have republished it here.
Check out the whole article here: http://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-what-is-bitcoin-2013-3?op=1
While the bitcoin platform is theoretically sound--the decentralized blockchain makes it near impossible to counterfeit--vulnerabilities do exist at a few key junctures. Continuing Motherboard's Bitcoin guide from the weekend, here's some crucial ways the whole thing could unravel.
The first is market-based. With only a one billion dollar market cap, manipulating the market requires limited investment. If someone suddenly sold off a few million bitcoins--a highly unlikely event--it would bring the price crashing back down to zero.
The second is technological. Someone could conceivably take over bitcoin mining, the process by which bitcoins are produced and new transactions are verified and added to the blockchain, by commanding 51 percent of the overall processing power. Given the current rate hashrate, the combined processing power of all bitcoin miners, such an event would require only a few million dollars investment. In fact, Avalon, the company that delivered the world’s first purpose-specific bitcoin miner, already has this capability, having monopolized the specialized bitcoin-chipset market.
Both the market-based and technological vulnerabilities are protected from the profit-motive perspective, in that any person or group wouldn’t be incentivized to corner the bitcoin market or monopolize mining since it would subsequently destroy bitcoin’s value. On the other hand, you can’t rule out bitcoin terrorism, say, some pissed-off bank with ulterior motives. Such vulnerabilities are mitigated with further adoption as the required investment would increase in lockstep.
The open source development of bitcoin also creates its own issues, as we saw recently with the software glitch that created a fork in the blockchain and temporarily crashed the system. These problems would need to be addressed at an organizational level, which can be tricky when no one is technically in charge. Read more here: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-bitcoin-could-die
One of the more interesting developments of the modern electronic age of money has been the rise of Bitcoin, a decentralized digital form of money. If you’re not familiar with it or you’re confused by what Bitcoin is, you’re not alone. It’s a fairly new, innovative and complex form of money. And that’s right, Bitcoin is definitely money.
Today’s Dominant Form of Money Versus Bitcoin
Anyone who understands the basic tenets of Monetary Realism know that many things can serve as money and many things DO serve as money. After all, anyone can create money, but the trouble is in getting others to accept it. And since money’s primary purpose is in the means of exchange, just about anything can serve as money as long as it meets that primary purpose. The thing is, there aren’t all that many things that meet that need on a broad level. For instance, lots of people like to claim that gold is money (which it is), but gold isn’t accepted for payment in many places. Therefore, MR says that gold has a low level of moneyness (to better understand the concept of moneyness please see here). Gold is money, but it’s just not a very good kind of money. Bitcoin is actually very similar. If you have Bitcoins you can buy certain things online that only a Bitcoin merchant will allow you to buy. These merchants accept Bitcoins as a form of final payment. To them, it’s a form of money with a very high level of moneyness. But to a company like Wal-Mart a Bitcoin is like a gold bar. It doesn’t give you access to anything in their store therefore its moneyness is virtually nil in a Wal-Mart. Most retailers around the world view Bitcoins similarly.
In the USA, the primary form of money is bank deposits because bank deposits are the form of money that dominate the US payments system. The US payments system, which is maintained by private banks, is the primary playing field for the purpose of exchanging goods and services. In other words, if you want access to the most convenient and widely accepted form of payment (bank deposits), you need to become a member of the US payments system usually by becoming a bank client. This gives you access to credit cards, debit cards, a bank account that allows you to withdraw/deposit cash, etc which allows you to interact on the US payments system. Becoming a bank client is kind of like opening a Ticketmaster account so you can obtain access to the means of exchange to gain entry into a theater performance (you just want access to the tickets that give you access to a performance). In the case of banking, you open an account in order to gain access to the US payments system so you can access the performance that is the US economy. Obtaining Bitcoins is similar in many ways, but very different as I’ll describe below. - Read more here: http://www.businessinsider.com/is-bitcoin-money-2013-4
If you're like most people, you have probably been hearing a lot about "Bitcoin" recently.
And, if you're like most people, you probably do not know what it is or what the fuss is all about.
Here's a snapshot.
Bitcoin is an electronic currency--a new form of money.
It's also, possibly, the next great asset bubble. (Or investment, depending on how the story ends. Or both, depending on when you get in and get out.)
Bitcoins take the form of strings of numbers that can be electronically owned by and transferred among individuals and organizations. For now, the currency is primarily used for payments by fringe retailers or illegal transactions, but it is being accepted more and more widely. And organizations that exchange Bitcoins for standard currency are now being approved to operate as banks.
The premise and promise of Bitcoin--the part that appeals to folks who don't happen to be gold bugs, conspiracy theorists, or cryptography geeks (obviously they all love it)--is that the current plan is for only a finite number of Bitcoins to be created. This is in direct contrast to standard government-issued currencies, which governments can always print more of. If the supply of Bitcoins remains finite, this should theoretically eliminate inflation, which is one of the biggest drawbacks of paper money.
(Although inflation has remained low in recent years, it ravages the value of paper money over time. A dollar in 1900 is only worth about $0.04 in today's currency.)
So Bitcoin is conceptually very interesting, especially since it is not issued by a government agency. (Here's a great presentation on what Bitcoin is and why some people are so excited about it.)
What has suddenly grabbed the public's attention about Bitcoin, however, is the recent explosion in the value of the currency.
Because the number of Bitcoins is limited, their value increases rapidly when more people want them. And when the value of something increases rapidly, even more people want them. So the initial price increases fuel future price increases which fuel more future price increases...at least for a while.
Of course, this dynamic has fueled the inflation of every asset bubble in history. So it behooves people to analyze the sustainability of such price increases carefully.
When Bitcoin was launched in 2010, the currency initially had very little value. Quickly, however, the price of each "coin" soared above $25, making the initial Bitcoin believers rich. Then prices collapsed, with coins trading down to $5 again. And then Bitcoin prices began a slow and steady rise that has suddenly gone parabolic. - Read more here: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-is-the-perfect-bubble-2013-4
After what seems like an eternity of silence the latest update from Butterfly Labs is not good. BFL_Josh reveals in the update that both the power requirements and hashing rate of the new bitcoin ASIC miners are not what they expected, and not in a good way.
It seems that they may ship the bitcoin ASIC miner with either decreased hash rate or increased power requirement. In the post Butterfly Labs may release a revised bitcoin ASIC miner some time in the future that meets the original specifications at a later date.
It seems that the bounty of 1000 BTC that Butterfly Labs offered to donate to charity if they miss their power requirements is going to have to be paid.
More details are appearing in the ButterflyLabs forum Shout Box, I will try to update the information here as it becomes available.
No mention of a shipping date yet.
Below is the full update from BFL_Josh.
“I had wanted to post a video tonight, but wasn’t able to make that happen, so let me apologize for that in advance. As some of you may know from the chatbox, we have been working diligently to get these ASICs out the door. We’ve been tracking down a power issue these last few days and have it isolated to a few key systems. In the interest of time, we are planning on potentially scaling back units hashing speed as required to accommodate the extra power and shipping multiple units to those that want their units right now. If would would prefer to wait for a unit after we’ve made some changes to the systems that need a bit of tweaking, we will be happy to put your shipment on hold. However, if you’d rather have the units right now at an increased power usage, we will ship you as many units as required to get you to the hashrate your purchased, if we end up having to scale back any given class of unit to fit within the power envelope of the current board design. - Read more here: http://mineforeman.com/2013/03/29/butterfly-labs-update
There’s nothing quite like a crisis to throw up a range of creative, inventive solutions. As currency markets have yet another litter of kittens over the stability of the Euro and Cyprus waddles the tightrope, one currency is thriving. BitcoinWith trust in central banks, currency traders and the global financial system at an all time low, it can come as little surprise that a means of trade and exchange developed within the self regulating shadows of the open source internet has small investors running to snap it up. With a general consensus that most global currencies may indeed not be worth the paper they are printed on, this historic plummet in trust has thrown up the rise of the Bitcoin – that works in its own cryptic algorithm. The key to the bitcoin is that you can’t just print more and utterly devalue the system. So no ‘quantative easing’ then.Equally, with governments now apparently able to raid citizen’s bank accounts at any time, people are left with the two traditional options – under the mattress, buy gold and the new one – buying Bitcoin.Two weeks ago, one Bitcoin was worth $40, then a record high. Today, it's worth $72, largely because of "incremental interest" from Euro and Russian ruble holders who are terrified by the situation in Cyprus, said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group, a financial technology company in Manhattan. It is outperforming 20 national currencies"The best-performing currency year-to-date has no home country, no central banker and no physical scrip," Colas said.And therein lies its strength. Possibly invented by someone who might possibly be called Satoshi Nakamoto and who might possibly have been a cryptography student in Dublin, it begins and ends as a closed system that genuinely operates within the vectors of a free market without state interference to skew value.Charlie Shrem, the CEO of BitInstant, a payment processor for Bitcoin exchanges said"Let's say you have someone in Cyprus who badly needs money," Shrem said. "How are you going to get that person money? There's not enough cash going around. Bitcoin can and will be used as a barter, or maybe a collateral tool." - http://digitaledge.excite.co.uk/bitcoin-soars-in-value-as-confidence-in-traditional-currencies-collapses-N45365.html
So far, the world’s first independent and decentralized digital currency, Bitcoin, has been mostly used for small transactions. There are pundits who predict that Bitcoin will never be able to make the leap from servicing small online transactions to the big markets, like energy or real estate. A Canadian Bitcoin fan wants to prove the wrong.
Twenty-two-year-old Taylor More is trying to sell his house in Alberta for 5,362 Bitcoins. The amount of Bitcoins required for this purchase is the equivalent of 395,000 US dollars. The offer to sell the house is listed on the website For Sale By Owner.
“My home is being traded for Bitcoins!” reads More’s listing. “Properties like this rarely come on the market and this one’s priced to sell in one of the most sought-after recreation areas of the Rockies.”
So far, the listing failed to attract buyers but it captured the attention of big media. CBC has interviewed More and he had the opportunity to tell the world about the advantages of the decentralized digital currency: “Because it has no central authority no one can freeze accounts. So people are seeing the beauty of it, especially considering what is going on in Cyprus with everyone’s bank accounts being frozen. This is a way to keep your savings safe”, he explained.
More has not received any offers on his house so far, but his decision to sell it for Bitcoins is a sign that the experimental currency has a chance to become widely accepted. Even if Bitcoins are not recognized as an official currency, there are websites which allow Bitcoin holders to buy electronics, web-hosting services, beauty products and even pizzas. An American company has developed a Bitcoin ATM and will install Bitcoin “vending machines” in coffee shops and bars across America.
On the other hand, the US Treasury has expressed concern that Bitcoins and other digital currencies are used for money laundering and for financing illicit activities like terrorism. Zerohedge reports that FinCEN, the anti-money laundering arm of the US Treasury, is trying to make all Bitcoin transactions “borderline illegal” so, Taylor More is unlikely to sell his house to an American buyer. - http://engineeringevil.com/2013/03/31/bitcoin-transactions-enter-the-real-estate-market
Already bigger than many sovereign currencies, Bitcoin has broken the $1 billion in value mark this week. In the wake of continuing economic crises and liquidity shortages, this new virtual currency is poised to challenge the euro and US dollar.By not being tied to any particular financial institution and independent from world governments, Bitcoin will become a safe haven for anyone trying to save their money from the crippled international banking system, claimed Max Keiser, the host of RT's Keiser Report.“It is inevitable that Bitcoin will become a multi-trillion dollar enterprise because every other currency in the world is tied to dying central banks that are encumbered with impossible-to-pay debts and bankrupt counter-party risks,” Keiser said.Crypto-currencyBitcoin emerged in 2009 amid the global financial meltdown. The digital currency was created by someone who identified himself as Satoshi Nakamoto. It is based on open-source software, and uses peer-to-peer connections for monetary transactions to avoid centralized authorities.Bitcoin aims to provide safe and secure exchange by verifying transactions with encryption that is used in military and government applications. And unlike bank services, the Bitcoin network is free, except for a voluntary to speed up transaction processing.Issuance of the currency is completely automated, with 25 new bitcoins generated every 10 minutes; inflation is set to be halved every four years, until a total of 21 million bitcoins is reached. In theory, the currency would not lose its purchasing power unless individuals and businesses refused to use bitcoins.With numerous financial companies already exchanging bitcoins into any of the world’s currencies, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, Rick Falkvinge, estimated that Bitcoin could capture between 1 and 10 percent of the global foreign exchange market. This implies that the price of each and every bitcoin would rise to between $100,000 and $1 million, Max Keiser explained.“I have stated that myself,” Keiser said. “I think bitcoin's price will reach $200,000 per bitcoin before Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway's stock.”Ten years ago, few predicted that Facebook would have more than 1 billion users worldwide/ By the same token, few today imagine bitcoin could take on the G20 nations, but Keiser believes this may soon take place: “Bitcoin's valuation, already bigger than many sovereign currencies, will challenge the most-traded currencies today, including the US dollar, the euro, the yen and the renminbi.”Regulatory hand reaches outBecause the virtual currency bypasses authorities and cannot be taxed unless the person deliberately reveals his transactions, the US government and the Treasury Department are seeking to enact stricter regulations and new money-laundering rules.It is difficult to predict this new policy would play out: Patrick Murck, a legal counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, a trade group promoting industry standards, said the framework “would be infeasible for many, if not most, members of the Bitcoin community to comply with.”Keiser believes that Bitcoin users and the currency itself have little to worry about, unlike most of Internet startups feeling themselves suddenly vulnerable to government oversight. Bitcoins are not issued by a central body, and rely on a network of verification nodes to regulate transactions; in the future, Bitcoin users may achieve enough political clout to defend itself in traditional arenas.“As Bitcoin's price increases, the new Bitcoin millionaires and billionaires will use their economic clout to rewrite laws in favor of Bitcoin, the same way banks like JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs lobby government to write laws that favor them,” he explained.Web 3.0?Bitcoin could also offer relief to debt-stricken countries such as Cyprus. “Cyprus was Bitcoin's 'come to Jesus' moment and it's fitting it happened around the Easter Holiday,” Keiser said.“For millions of people around the world who have been victimized by banksters and their corrupt politician friends, the light bulb went off and they suddenly realized they could save their wealth by parking it in Bitcoin and no government or bankster could stop them.”After the initial rush of interest in the Internet in the mid-1990s, and the follow-up boom of Web 2.0 and the growth of social networking, Bitcoin is the third and “perhaps the most disruptive wave of all,” Keiser said.“This is Web 3.0,” he said. “For me it's extremely exciting since I pioneered the idea of virtual currencies back in the mid 1990s and have four US patents in my name covering virtual trading and virtual currencies. Most people I talked to back then about these ideas and the possibility that something like Bitcoin could exist didn't think it was possible. They were wrong.” - Russia Today: 'Challenging the dollar': Bitcoin total value tops $1 billion http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-challenge-dollar-currency-121/
