cross-referenced news and research resources about
bitcoins
Bitcoin (BTC) is a digital currency first described in a 2008 paper by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto, who called it a peer-to-peer, electronic cash system. Bitcoin creation and transfer is based on an open source cryptographic protocol and is not managed by any central authority. Each bitcoin is subdivided into 100 million smaller units called satoshis, defined by eight decimal places. Bitcoins can be transferred through a computer or smartphone without an intermediate financial institution.
The processing of bitcoin transactions is automated by servers called bitcoin miners. These servers communicate over an internet-based network and confirm transactions by adding them to a ledger which is updated and archived periodically. In addition to archiving transactions each new ledger update creates some newly-minted Bitcoins. The number of new Bitcoins created in each update is halved every 4 years until the year 2140 where this number will round down to zero. At that time no more Bitcoins will be added into circulation and the total number of Bitcoins will top out at 21 million Bitcoins.
Bitcoin is accepted in trade by various merchants and individuals in many parts of the world. A large share of such commercial use is believed to be for illicit drug and gambling transactions. Although bitcoin is promoted as a digital currency, many commentators have criticized Bitcoin's volatile market value, relatively inflexible supply, and minimal use in trade.
|
bitcoin wallet
|
|
updated Tue. March 5, 2024
-
Cointelegraph
April 26, 2018
A survey by Thomson Reuters shows that one in five financial institutions is planning to start cryptocurrency trading within the next 12 months. The survey included large banks, hedge funds and asset managers. This will probably mean a huge flood of fresh money will vie for the limited number of digitalÃâà...
Coindesk
April 26, 2018
After an overnight drop, bitcoin looks to have found acceptance below $9,000 and risks a deeper pullback, the technical charts indicate. The cryptocurrency hit a one-week low of $8,652 on Bitfinex earlier today and is now trading at $8,700. The 10-percent decline from the weekly high of $9,767 onÃâà...
TheStreet.com
April 26, 2018
Bitcoin looked to register losses Wednesday as prices fell from highs near $9,750 set overnight. The No. 1 cryptocurrency dipped as low as about $8,900, shedding more than 8% for the day at lows. As losses mounted, trading volume skyrocketed near $12 billion, or 1.3 million bitcoins, reaching a high notÃâà...
MarketWatch
April 26, 2018
Digital currencies have taken a further pause Thursday, with most major assets trading in relatively tight ranges. The No. 1 digital currency, bitcoin BTCUSD, -3.11% slipped back below $9,000, trading to its lowest level of the week at $8,660.87. A single bitcoin last traded at $8,847.25, down 2.5%, sinceÃâà...
Iowa State Daily
April 26, 2018
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are words that have become buzzwords over the past few years. But what makes these currencies worth anything? In December 2017, bitcoin hit an all time high of $19,783. This was shortly followed by a drop in price of almost half its value within a month's time. This volatility inÃâà...
Investopedia (blog)
April 26, 2018
Promotional activities, like paying token amounts for like, share, post, and watch ads, can let users start earning bitcoins through the Facebook Bitcoin system, and Facebook can launch a mining operation in the background to gain control of the majority. Once they have a sufficient number of coins, thenÃâà...
TheStreet.com
April 26, 2018
Unlike Ether and Ripple, which are both linked to parent companies, Bitcoin doesn't have a true owner -- indeed, nobody really knows who actually created the currency in the first place. Nor is there a centralized entity that issues Bitcoin to new investors -- most people earn Bitcoins through mining orÃâà...
Investopedia (blog)
April 25, 2018
As of this writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading for more than $9,300, having climbed by several hundred dollars per coin in the past day. This is the fourth time that the cryptocurrency has passed this landmark threshold, and it has some analysts wondering what the future holds for the cryptocurrency leader.
Investopedia (blog)
April 25, 2018
In early 2009, the mysterious cryptocurrency developer (or team of developers) with the alias "Satoshi Nakamoto" released the first software program which implemented the digital currency bitcoin. Since then, bitcoin has gone on to not only gain massive appeal across the glbe, but also to inspire hundredsÃâà...
MIT Technology Review
April 25, 2018
For those who already use Bitcoin, the experience is so vastly superior to what they've previously experienced that they immediately migrate their funds to their Facebook wallet. Those who don't yet own any bitcoins, or have never heard of them, could be given the option of earning some on the site, eitherÃâà...
Coindesk
April 25, 2018
No bitcoins were actually transferred through these transactions, according to data from Blockchain.info. OP_Return was first introduced in 2013 as a way for users to include some messages in the blockchain. However, the Bitcoin Core 0.9 release notably stated that developers were not endorsing dataÃâà...
Recode
April 25, 2018
It helps to understand that a bitcoin has no value at all. Promoters claim cryptocurrency is valuable as (1) a means of payment, (2) a store of value and/or (3) a thing in itself. None of these claims are true. 1. Means of Payment. Bitcoins are accepted almost nowhere, and some cryptocurrencies nowhere at all.
CNBC
April 25, 2018
Bitcoin rose to its highest level in more than a month as the broader U.S. financial markets sold off Tuesday. The digital currency was trading near $9,436 as of 4:21 p.m. ET, and has jumped nearly 20 percent in the past week, according to data from Coindesk. Bitcoin is coming off of its worst quarter ever,Ãâà...
Fortune
April 25, 2018
Assuming there will be 18 million Bitcoins in circulation by the time the cryptocurrency fully replaces gold bullion (about 17 million Bitcoins have been produced so far, out of the maximum 21 million that can exist), the implied value of a Bitcoin would then be $90,000. This is Pfeffer's most conservativeÃâà...
CNBC
April 22, 2018
The latest potential competitor for gold may be bitcoin, the cryptocurrency created in 2009 as open-source software for a decentralized form of payment. Last year, when bitcoin prices rose from their 2017 starting value of just under $1,000 to over $19,000 by mid-December, market chatter was that bitcoinÃâà...
Fortune
April 21, 2018
Six years ago, Nader Al-Naji was mining Bitcoin in his dorm room at Princeton University. He still owns the 22 Bitcoins he mined in college. But today, Al-Naji is the cofounder and CEO of Intangible Labs, whose forthcoming product Basis (formerly known as Basecoin), is a cryptocurrency designed to do justÃâà...
Investopedia (blog)
April 21, 2018
Mining bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is not as profitable as once thought, according to one team of analysts on the Street who views this as a negative headwind for the price of the volatile digital asset. If bitcoin fails to break past $8,600 soon, analysts at Morgan StanleyÃâà...
Fortune
April 21, 2018
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey predicted that Bitcoin will eclipse all the world's currencies in around 10 years . But the man nominated to be head of the New York Federal Reserve disagrees. In a speech Friday, the current San Francisco Fed President John Williams laid out a case for why cryptocurrencies, theÃâà...
Fortune
April 20, 2018
Bitcoin mining gets more power-intensive, and therefore more expensive, as time goes on. That's because the “mathematical problems” that miners have to solve in order to continue assembling the Bitcoin blockchain—and earn Bitcoins as a reward—get progressively more difficult. (While these problemsÃâà...
Cointelegraph
April 20, 2018
Spring's chorus of bullish predictions for Bitcoin appears to be having some corroboration from recent markets, as Bloomberg reports on Bitcoin's 4 percent gain today, April 20, putting the coin on track for its first back-to-back week of gains this year. Bloomberg notes the recent upswing has brought BTC'sÃâà...
CoinDesk
April 20, 2018
Is the reversal of a lesser-known bitcoin price indicator signaling a bull trap? That's the question being asked by Twitter's more expert crypto analysts after bitcoin's rise to $8,500 this week, a figure that's up more than 25 percent since its early April lows. As such, many investors and traders are wondering ifÃâà...
Coindesk
April 20, 2018
Bitcoin trading platform LedgerX has seen a sevenfold increase in volume in the six months following its launch of cryptocurrency derivatives. Chief operating officer Juthica Chou told CoinDesk that the startup has seen roughly $7.5 million traded weekly through 700 swaps and options contracts. Since theÃâà...
CNBC
April 20, 2018
Bitcoin jumped Friday morning, bringing its post-Tax Day gains to more than 8 percent. The cryptocurrency spiked about $300 to a high of $8,554.97, according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price index. Bitcoin was trading more than 2.5 percent higher near $8,500 as of 9:48 a.m. ET. That marked an 8.5 percentÃâà...
The Independent
April 20, 2018
The price of bitcoin has shot up by almost $500 over the last 24 hours, causing a market-wide cryptocurrency resurgence that has seen ethereum, ripple and bitcoin cash surge in value by between 10 and 20 per cent. Bitcoin's latest gains come one week after bitcoin bucked months of steadily decreasingÃâà...
CNBC
April 19, 2018
If bitcoin can't recover $8,600 soon, bitcoin "miners" will likely find it unprofitable to keep creating the cryptocurrency, Morgan Stanley analysts said. Bitcoin traded slightly higher near $8,200 on Thursday, according to CoinDesk. It has struggled to recover in the last few months after tumbling from a recordÃâà...
CNBC
April 13, 2018
Cryptocurrencies have been under pressure for the majority of 2018, due in part to selling in time for tax season, as well as pending regulation in the space. This has caused a capitulation in investor sentiment; in other words, investors have more or less waved a white flag as bitcoin has declined so sharplyÃâà...
CCN
April 13, 2018
Indian bitcoin exchange Coinsecure has disclosed a theft of 438 bitcoins, valued at over $3 million at press time, from its wallet in what is the country's biggest cryptocurrency theft to date. Delhi-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinsecure has accused its own CSO of stealing the coins from the company'sÃâà...
MarketWatch
April 13, 2018
Bitcoin recorded its largest intraday climb since Feb. 6 Thursday, rising by as much as 16%, and trading through $8,000 for the first time in two weeks. After spending much of 2018 in a downtrend, the No. 1 digital currency is showing signs of a possible change in fortune. Threads and Twitter feeds blew upÃâà...
TNW
April 13, 2018
There's been a lot of controversy surrounding Bitcoin mining pretty much since its inception. The process of mining is so costly that it's unfeasible for most people to be able to participate in the mining, leaving the control over the blockchain consensus mechanism to a select few people. A recent interviewÃâà...
PBS NewsHour
April 13, 2018
Editor's note: Bitcoin's price has soared over the past year, placing it at the center of the debate over the future of cryptocurrency. But while Bitcoin was released nearly a decade ago, many consumers still don't know much about how it works. PBS NewsHour Economics Correspondent Paul Solman recentlyÃâà...
The Verge
April 13, 2018
Bitcoin began from nothingness. The genesis block was mined on January 3rd, 2009, and yeah, the design was good and there was no double spending and Bitcoin's followers became many. They used Bitcoin to buy a pizza and alpaca socks and drugs on the Silk Road, and they told their friends to useÃâà...
CNBC
April 13, 2018
Trust the bitcoin bounce? 6 Hours Ago. Spencer Bogart, Blockchain Capital, discusses the bounce in most of the popular cryptocurrencies and whether you should buy in. Watch CNBC Live TVÃâà...
Coindesk
April 13, 2018
Officials in yet another county in the U.S. state of Washington have placed a moratorium on new crypto mining operations. Announced Wednesday, Mason County's Public Utility District (PUD) commissioners decided to implement the freeze in order to consider the effect mining operations have on the localÃâà...
Seeking Alpha
April 4, 2018
A lot has happened to bitcoin since my December 10 article. It seems like bitcoin (Cryptocurrency:BTC-USD) (COIN) (OTCQX:GBTC) bears got the decline they were waiting for. After surging nearly 1300% in 2017, bitcoin peaked at $19,343 on Sunday, December 17, 2017, and bottomed 69.2% lower atÃâà...
newsBTC
April 4, 2018
He showed how traditionally Bitcoin has experienced bad first quarters, even in 2017 when the market went on a meteoric rise the first quarter growth was just over 10%. Kelly told the “Futures Now” segment that cryptocurrency has historically performed better in the second quarter, predicting that “ThereÃâà...
Brave New Coin
April 4, 2018
In previous articles, I described why we need to get incentives right when we build tokenized ecosystems; and introduced ideas towards a practice of token engineering. We can use these tools to help analyze existing tokenized ecosystems, and design new ones. This article does exactly that with caseÃâà...
Coindesk
April 4, 2018
Bitcoin (BTC) fell by 50 percent in the first three months of 2018 - a drop that marks the cryptocurrency's worst Q1 performance on record. A look back at historical Bitcoin Price Index data shows that the halving in value seen this year is the second-worst quarterly performance ever. The cryptocurrencyÃâà...
The Verge
April 4, 2018
For months, Seoul resident Ye-won Oh monitored cryptocurrency markets voraciously, refreshing her phone practically every minute of every day. In early 2017, she invested $40,000 in Ethereum, which has become wildly popular in South Korea. Like many young Koreans living through Korea's difficultÃâà...
Coindesk
April 4, 2018
If, however, bitcoin closes below $7,000 today, it would add credence to the downward sloping (bearish biased) 10-day MA and signal failure to hold above hold above $7,240. Further, the 5-day MA would adopt a bearish bias, derailing the bottoming out process. Hence, BTC needs to defend $7,000 toÃâà...
Fortune
April 4, 2018
It refers to the point at which a Bitcoin owner has built enough of a Bitcoin stockpile to buy a Lamborghini. And now, there's a website available to those cryptocurrency owners called When Lambo? that offers a calculator to quickly determine how many Bitcoins they'll need to buy a $425,000 Lamborghini.
CNBC
April 4, 2018
After bitcoin closed out the worst first quarter in its history, one cryptocurrency expert sees it rebounding from recent losses and possibly bouncing back to early year highs. "Q2 is always good for Bitcoin," Brian Kelly, founder of Brian Kelly Capital and a "Fast Money" contributor, told CNBC's "Futures Now"Ãâà...
CNBC
April 3, 2018
By "Metcalfe's law," bitcoin's market value by the end of the year should be no more than $77 billion, Spencer Wheatley and Didier Sornette, both professors of entrepreneurial risks at ETH Zurich, said in a paper dated March 16. That's $41 billion, or nearly 35 percent, less than bitcoin's market capitalizationÃâà...
CNBC
April 3, 2018
Bitcoin prices rallied above $7,000 on Monday after shedding 25 percent last week, as major U.S. stock markets fell. The digital currency gained more than $500 from Easter Sunday, according to data from CoinDesk. Bitcoin hit a high of $7,108.20 Monday, and later dropped to $6,919 as of 4:39 p.m. ET.
CBS News
April 3, 2018
Bitcoin may have climbed on Monday while major U.S. stock indexes were tumbling, but don't think the debate over the cryptocurrency is any closer to being resolved. After all, bitcoin prices -- whose stratospheric rise made some rich and confounded many professional money managers -- have plummetedÃâà...
Fortune
April 3, 2018
Given Bitcoin's meteoric rise in 2017, and persistent slump this year, it's easy to wonder just how much the digital currency is really worth. Researchers at ETH Zurich say they may have found an answer: Bitcoin's value is based on the network of people who use it. And they suspect that the currency isÃâà...
MarketWatch
April 3, 2018
The price of the No. 1 digital currency rose Monday, as bitcoin looked to claw back some losses from the previous week, which took its price from above $8,000 to below $6,500. The selling pressure into the weekend formed the much-talked-about “death cross,” a chart formation where the 50-day movingÃâà...
Coindesk
April 3, 2018
Around the same time, a handful of developers reported lightning nodes crashing, temporarily stopping them from sending payments using the technology designed for faster, cheaper bitcoin transactions. The development comes as more and more users have started using lightning network to send realÃâà...
Coindesk
April 3, 2018
Bitcoin (BTC) continues to mount a recovery despite the recent bearish "death cross" chart event. As of writing, bitcoin is changing hands at $7,400 on Bitfinex and the average price on leading exchanges, as represented by CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index, is seen at $7,380. The cryptocurrency's 15-percentÃâà...
CNBC
April 3, 2018
Bitcoin fell from $13,412.44 to $6,928.85 in the three months ended March 31, marking a more than 48 percent decline, according to data from industry website CoinDesk, which tracks the price across a number of exchanges. The cryptocurrency's previous biggest decline came in the first quarter of 2013Ãâà...
Coindesk
April 2, 2018
"Bitcoin Core's original coin selection algorithm actually needs a lot of reworking, especially with regards to transaction fees. It's inefficient and it ends ... In short, it looks at all the inputs to see if there's a way to reach exactly the number of bitcoins a user wants to send in a transaction. "This helps shrink theÃâà...
|
news and opinion
|
|
|
|
|
|