A controversial Bitcoin block size proposal has been upgraded.
UASF, in fact, is a new idea proposed by a pseudonymous contributor called Shaolingfry.
She/he wants to solve the bitcoin block size debate with a user activated soft fork (UASF), a possible method arount the actual deadlock over the Segregated Witness (Segwit) solution.
Right now, the need for a majority consensus in order to make a decision means that any mining pool with enough hashing power has the veto power over any proposal; this might be the reason why SegWit is tardy to arrive.
Conversely, UASF wants to bypass the veto power and put the decision only into the hands of bitcoin’s users.
After a first general UASF proposal, Shaolinfry suggested a change – BIP148 – in order to moving the power out of the miners’ decision and give it to the “economic majority”.
Gregory Maxwell and other bitcoin developers refused this proposal because it could undermine the bitcoin blockchain stability.
“We should use the least disruptive mechanisms available and the BIP148 proposal does not meet that test,” he wrote
For this reason, Shaolinfry announced he/she is working on a redraft of the proposal to address some of the concerns suggested by Maxwell and other developers.
Shaolinfry published an announcement post saying that the reason for this changes is related to technical criticisms of how UASF would upgrade the network.
“BIP 148 is certainly not what a normal UASF would or should look like. While support for BIP 148 is surprisingly high, there are definitely important players who support UASF in general but do not like BIP148 approach.”
This revised proposal suggests the use of BIP8, but this concerns how soft forks are implemented.
Right now, if the 95% hashrate support for the Segregated Witness option is not reached by November 15th, the proposal will be discarded by default.
Anyway, the technical changes made in a proposal (BIP8) would be automatically locked in at the end of the time period, even if they could be adopted sooner.
Shaolinfry’s idea is that after the November 15th, a UASF SegWit proposal will be edited according to the BIP8 changes.
This means that the bitcoin community would have 1 year to prepare the upgrading of a UASF, removing the possible destabilizing effect of a short-term.
“I believe this approach would satisfy the more measured approach expected for bitcoin and does not have the issues Maxwell brought up about BIP148.”
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Right now the debate about a possible Bitcoin fork is very noisy and maybe it is the main factor that is driving the cryptocurrency price at the moment.
At press time, bitcoin value is less than $1000 with some traders that are liquidating their positions.
Amidst one of the more volatile period of bitcoin, developers seem not to be scared or worried about this two-year scaling debate.
Several miners are running the so-called solution “Bitcoin Unlimited“, a popular alternative bitcoin software that opened a discussion of a possible fork of the network which could generate two different digital currencies, a result similar to what happened with the recent Ethereum hard fork that lead to the creation of Ethereum Classic.
Bitcoin Core contributor Eric Lombrozo has taken a skeptical point of view, explaining that the bitcoin community is not new to this issues.
Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Classic, or other software alternatives that aims at changing the bitcoin blockchain- related rules, have emerged, but also declined, over the last few days.
While users who support the Bitcoin Unlimited think that is the real future for bitcoin, arguing that a bitcoin fork will bring it as the winning software, critics view it as broken.
Lombozo explained:
“The idea you can change bitcoin by lobbying one group of stakeholders against another is fundamentally flawed, as is the idea you can force controversial consensus rule changes. Bitcoin requires more tactful politics.”
On the other hand, Bitcoin Unlimited supporter Peter Rizun believes that bitcoin will see a block size increase, making bitcoin competitive with the other alternative cryptocurrencies.
“In my opinion, there’s a 75% chance we get an upgrade to larger blocks in 2017,” he commented.
So, while some people substain that only one software will be able to survive after this possible bitcoin fork, other experts suggested that most people won’t move to a new blockchain, so Bitcoin Unlimited will lead to another digital currency.
But, of course, the greatest part of the community want only one bitcoin.
Bitcoin Core contributor Luke Dashjr said to Coindesk:
“A hard fork is by definition an altcoin that the entire community decides to adopt as a replacement. Since most of the community rejects Bitcoin Unlimited, it is impossible for it to become a hard fork. Anyone can fork at any time. That people don’t speaks to the strong incentives not to.”
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Soon a new bitcoin exchange regulation in China may be required to ensure know-your-customers (KYC) verifications.
According to an article published by Caixin, the People’s Bank of China issued a new paper for the Chinese exchanges on which it is looking for comments for the proposed regulation.
This move is part of a effort by the Chinese central bank in order to have a bitcoin exchange regulation and avoid money laundering and other financial crimes.
According to the official press release, this paper explains both a regulation related to the anti-money laundering (AML) issues and the creation of a customer identification system.
Bitcoin users will have to own an on-site certification if they want to deposit funds. To do se, they will have to present identification at the time of registration. Also, for clients who hold more than ¥50,000 (over $7,200) in volume, a remote video certification will be required to authenticate their own identity.
The document also contemplates that there must be a senior management team who controls AML procedures and reports dubious transactions.
This news come after the PBoC’s decision made back in January that indicates to intervene in the Chinese bitcoin market during this period of heavy bitcoin price volatility.
Since then, bitcoin exchanges started to implement several new policies, ending margin trading and freezing withdrawals for a few cryptocurrencies.
At the moment, while I’m writing this article, bitcoin Chinese exchange withdrawals are still frozen.
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According to the Coindesk Price Index (CPI) Bitcoin price has reached a new goal, as it is one month that its value is above $1000.
The digital currency remained above this value despite any situation as the refusal of the bitcoin ETF related proposal by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and the current debate over how to address the bitcoin’s technical limitations.
It was February 14th – is it a coincidence or a sign of destiny that this happened on the Valentine’s day? – when Bitcoin price first hit $1000, so yesterday (March 14th) it was one month above this price.
During this month, bitcoin reached its all time high, reaching a value of $1,300. Experts argued that this higher price was a consequence of the hope in the bitcoin ETF approval.
But, if it is true that right after the SEC negative decision, the bitcoin price fell of about 30% ($from 1209 to $1022), it quickly rose again and at press time bitcoin is trading at $1256, so more than 25% above $1000.
As explained by Andreas Antonopoulos on his official Twitter profile:
“If you measure bitcoin’s success by the approval of the incumbent and obsolete industry it replaces, you’re doing it wrong”.
Also, currently a few altcoins such as Ether, Dash, Zcash and more are experiencing new highs.
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The value of bitcoin has grown a lot in the last period, reaching its all-time high set back in 2013.
According to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index, at the moment the value of bitcoin is less than $30 below the maximum ever value of $1,165.89 reached on November 30th, 2013.
This latest rise comes after bitcoin’s longest ever period at over $1,000, and a period of average volatility during the recent few months.
Also, this high might reflect the traders and investors confidence in an industry field that has been recently affected by the Chinese central bank’s plan to restrict the Chinese bitcoin exchanges environment, with the result of several of them to temporarily stop any withdrawals of the digital currency.
Click here to better understand what gives Bitcoin value with an infographic.
Another possible news to having an influence on the value of Bitcoin is the currently SEC decision on the Winklevoss brothers’ bitcoin ETF – an event that some experts explained that traders are already pricing in a potential approval.
On March 11st we could see the approval of the first bitcoin ETF within the U.S.A. market, opening the virtual currency to a larger group of investors.
However, many experts in the industry cannot see a high propension of financial regulators to approve this move.
For more charts about the Value of Bitcoin in the past, click here.
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Soon many cities around the world will issue their own digital currency.
According to Pavel Bains, in fact, within the next 10 years we’ll see the first city that have its own digital money and that is separates from the national fiat currency.
This could be the right time for cities to exploit the blockchain and adop their own currency.
But for a new digital currency to be adopted quickly it needs the following characteristics, according to Bains (and we tent to agree with him):
Bains is pretty sure that the first city to adopt a digital currency will be Glasgow.
This because the Scottish city failed to benefit from the England pound and it came close to a recession back in 2015.
Also, Brexit opened a real issue for Scotland’s future with the potential loss of trades. Demand for Scotland’s products is already declining: in that year there was an 11% drop in exports compared to 2.7% for the UK and with Brexit the situation can only get worse.
But Glasgow has the right tools to adopt its own digital currency. These the major reasons according to Bains:
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A new Blockchain Tourism project will be created in the State of Hawaii, where legislators decided to form a new working group focused on the blockchain tech.
If approved, the House Bill 1481 will lead to the creation of a task force with the goal of researching the use and practices related to the distributed ledger technology.
This project is sponsored by Democratic Representatives Chris Lee and Mark Nakashima.
The official bill explained:
“The legislature finds that highly innovative technologies such as blockchain require an educated and measured approach so that regulations do not stymie innovation and growth in this State.”
The long-term goal, the bill states, is to seek ways for the technology to benefit local industries, residents and the State of Hawaii.
Should the measure be approved, the working group will have to prepare a report about the potential use cases specific to the State of Hawaii.
This research would also provide information on how the state itself could leverage the blockchain.
Among the areas of interest, of course, there would be the topic of tourism payments.
The bill also suggests that Hawaii should look to the technology as a way to encoure tourists from abroad to spend, improving the local economy.
“Digital currencies such as bitcoin have broad benefits for Hawaii. A large portion of Hawaii’s tourism market comes from Asia where the use of bitcoin as a virtual currency is expanding,” the bill reads. “Hawaii has the unique opportunity to explore the use of blockchain technology to make it easier for visitors to consume local goods and services and to drive the tourism economy.”
This Hawaiian bill is only one of the latest legislative efforts to be issued regarding the blockchain technology topic.
For example, in 2016 the State of Vermont proposed to modify a few laws of the country to allow blockchain data to be valid during trials.
This Legislative record also explained that the Vermont Senate introduced another bill to edit the country’s financial regulations to account for businesses that work in the digital currencies industry.
Recently we also talked about another project related to Blockchain Tourism: read more about the newest Webject project by clicking here.
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Bitcoin prices are growing more than 3% since yesterday, trading above $950 for the first time in a few weeks.
The average price yesterday reached a high of $959.37 from an open of $920.24, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI). This chart shows that the Bitcoin prices haven’t passed $950 for a month, since January 6th 2017, to be more exact.
This Bitcoin prices growth above $950 came after a few days of a almost steady trading, in which the price of bitcoin ranged between roughly $910 and $922, according to trading data.
At the moment, the Bitcoin Prices are between $950 and $970 with a medium rate of volatility.
Chinese markets have climbed about 11%, reaching a high of ¥6,629.34.
Currently the price is about ¥6,608.70 and it represents a growth of 10.7% above yesterday’s open of ¥5,961.77.
This move comes after a big news in the worldwide exchange landscape, as major bourses in China moved to add trading fees.
This is the reason why volumes moved to the remaining markets without any fees.
Anyway, experts now discuss that this trend will have a short life as those exchanges will also add fees of their own for sure in the next future.
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Today we want to talk about Cryptocurrencies 2016, as the just ended year has been very exciting for several digital currencies and not only for Bitcoin.
A lot of major open-source currencies, in fact, showed a good growth during 2016 and we hope to see significant expansion in 2017.
Below you’ll read charts of the excited cryptocurrencies 2016, during a period between December 27, 2015 to December 26, 2016.
Source: Coindesk.com
Market Capitalization (Beginning of Year): $6,161,215,794
Market Capitalization (End of Year): $14,590,356,108
Price (Beginning of Year): $411.99
Price (End of Year): $908.17
Price (Annual High): $909.94
For sure Bitcoin is the king of cryptocurrencies 2016, if we talk about value.
It is the oldest blockchain-based asset as today (January 3rd) it celebrates its 8th anniversary: the genesis block was generated on January 3rd 2009.
While I’m writing of this article, Bitcoin price is still growing, surpassing the value of $1,000 for 1 BTC.
Bitcoin price and trading volume were supported by several global circumstances, including the Chinese yuan devaluation, the UK’s Brexit, and the election of a Donald Trump.
Market Capitalization (Beginning of Year): $80,339,474
Market Capitalization (End of Year): $638,041,577
Price (Beginning of Year): $2.83
Price (End of Year): $7.31
Price (Annual High): $19.59
2016 saw Ether, or the digital currencies that powers the Ethereum blockchain – become the best-performing currencies, with a more than 2,000% increase over the first six months of 2016.
The major reason for its instability was the DAO hack, the subsequent failure of the decentralized project, and the creation of ethereum classic. These factors led to a fall of nearly 50% of this altcoin value.
Anyway, Ethereum is the favorite network for possible FinTech permissioned distributed ledgers, enterprise software and Internet of Things applications, so 2017 could will probably show a capitalization increase for ether.
Market Capitalization (Beginning of Year): $149,142,004
Market Capitalization (End of Year): $212,469,870
Price (Beginning of Year): $3.41
Price (End of Year): $4.34
Price (Annual High): $5.55
One of the oldest bitcoin alternative, litecoin showed a stable valuation during 2016, closing $2 above its starting price for the year.
Market Capitalization (Beginning of Year): $16,081.586
Market Capitalization (End of Year): $70,675,107
Price (Beginning of Year): $2.64
Price (End of Year): $9.67
Price (Annual High): $14.42
In 2015, darkcoin decided to end its association with shadow businesses and the DarkNet by changing its name to Dash.
This re-branding seemed to work and Dash ended 2016 with pricing nearly three times, and a market capitalization close to four times.
As we enter 2017, the future for cryptocurrencies seems bright, as the digital currency market will continue to progress and prove its worth as one of the top-performing commodities available today.
We at HolyTransaction are very happy to work with this top-rated cryptocurrencies, as our wallet can store Litecoin, Dash, Ethereum and Bitcoin within a unique login.
Needless to say, we are proud to have chosen the best and the most profitable cryptocurrencies for our multicurrency wallet you can open here for free.
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As the New Year’s Eve is coming, we decided to share with you the best moments of this year with an article about Bitcoin in 2016.
Involved in the best news about the distributed ledger technology, there are not only financial institutions and bank, but specially well-known companies related to countless sectors.
And his proves how the blockchain could be useful for a lots of use cases.
For example, in 2016 Microsoft announced its involvement in blockchain projects related to security, identity management, and a tool for developers called Microsoft BaaS.
Also, the worldwide company decided to accept Bitcoin among its available methods of payment on its online shop.
IBM was another company who dedicated much effort in blockchain research and projects.
Earlier this year, IBM revealed its new blockchain cloud service for helping companies in developing and testing the distributed ledger.
Also, it announced its revolutionary project called Watson, that together with the distributed ledger are “two technologies that will rapidly change the way we live and work, and our clients in Asia Pacific are eager to lead the way in envisioning and creating that future,” explained Randy Walker, CEO at IBM for the Asian area.
Bitcoin in 2016 also reached its annual high; and as the year comes to the end, its price continues to test the $1,000 mark and it seeks to set a new three-year high.
You might now that our company had to face some issues earlier this year, but now we are strong than ever and we’re very happy to having developed a new virtual exchange platform called HolyTransaction Funding.
Thanks to this exchange you can buy and sell bitcoin worldwide with no registration required. This means you can instantly convert your digital currency into fiat currencies and vice versa, without sharing your personal data.
On HolyTransaction Trade you can also create a Bitcoin Virtual Credit Card to buy everything you want online.
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