Bitcoin price: one month above $1000
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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Bitcoin ETF decision expected by Friday
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has to make an important decision related to the much-anticipated bitcoin ETF, or the bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund.
This decision is expected by Friday, as the SEC has an deadline fixed on March 11st to make the approve or disapprove a proposed rule change that would allow the creation of the first worldwide bitcoin ETF.
But, because the 11st falls on a Saturday, this decision could come before that date, maybe on Friday.
The proposal came three years ago, in mid 2013, by investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
If the fund receives approval, several experts speculated that bitcoin price could grow and maybe this expected approval already drove the bitcoin price in recent weeks, setting new all time highs in the recent period.
In fact, Bitcoin price neared $1,300 in recent days, reaching $1,293.47 on 3rd March.
By the way, bitcoin price kept falling back to $1,300, experiencing a drop on 7th March, when markets drop below $1,200 for a few hours.
Otherwise, if the SEC decides to reject the proposal that would allow the Bats Global Exchange to list the bitcoin ETF, experts said that the digital currency price would be negatively affected.
Phil Bak, CEO atACSI Funds explained that generally the SEC wants to avoid the appearance of “publicly rejecting an ETF”, so if the agency didn’t plan on approving a fund, it would ask for the filing to be pulled ahead before any final decision.
“In this case, the government agency may want to show the world it is unsure about bitcoin. Alternatively, it could also be that the advocates want to support it to the end and let this proposed fund get its day in court, rejection or not.”
In the lack of definitive statements published by the SEC, it’s really easy to understand why a common return of uncertainty has emerged during this week.
Arthur Hayes, CEO at BitMEX, explained:
“I have heard good arguments for and against the ETF being approved. At this point it is a coin toss.”
Waiting for the Bitcoin ETF
At the moment people who are waiting for the SEC’s decision canno do anything instead of only watching and waiting for the 11th March deadline.
ETF expert and co-founder at RagingBull, Jeff Bishop, commented that the SEC could make its decision further past the 11th, also because of the recent price gain.
“I have the feeling they will find a way to delay this even more though. With bitcoin at all-time highs and the SEC having a terrible record for allowing new ETFs to come to market at absolute tops, they will likely push back on this until things cool a bit. It should be up to investors to decide the true price of bitcoin. The more liquidity and options [there are] to trade it, the more transparent and accurate the pricing will be. It should not be up to a government agency to withhold something like this from the public.”
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Value of Bitcoin: the digital currency’s higher price
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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Europe Bitcoin report published by the EU Parliament. Read it here.
Below you can read the full Europe Bitcoin research published by the European Parliament a few days ago.
It is related to the blockchain technology and digital currencies, exploring distributed ledger use cases including digital payments, patent protection, smart contracts and online voting.
This research provides an educational point of view for EU’s legislative members, so probably we will experience a new Bitcoin regulation in the next future.
Researchers who works at the EU Parliament have studied several aspects of the distributed ledger in the past.
For example, a working group sponsored by the Parliament studied how the blockchain’s power to secure data could provide transparency during elections.
“Although blockchains are not the solution for every problem, and even if they will not revolutionize every aspect of our lives, they could have a substantial impact in many areas, and it is necessary to be prepared for the challenges and opportunities they present.”
“Europe Bitcoin” paper
The research suggests a few possible approaches for the European lawmakers, who recently approved the creation for a new task force focused on blockchain and digital currencies.
Also, the paper suggests more future explorations by saying that regulators could regulate and yield legal legitimacy to digital currencies transactions. More and more countries are regulating bitcoin and other virtual currencies during the last few monts.
The document’s authors explained also that this revolutionary techbology could provide many benefits to European citizens, even if it seems to be applicable only in a few cases.
“While the most idealistic and revolutionary visions of blockchain development will probably remain no more than visions, even moderate implementation of blockchain may still promote some degree of redistribution and transparency,” explained the authors in the document.
Click here to read the full Europe Bitcoin document for free.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
Glasgow digital currency: hope or reality?
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.
The Blockchain Role
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):
- Cheap: fiat currencies are very expensive to produce, manage and distribute. Conversely, a digital currency deletes all those costs and can easily be distributed;
- Secure: as it is digital, cryptographic and based on pure algorithms, the chance of forgery or distrust is removed;
- Safe: a digital currency can be backed by other assets like gold, treasury bills, foreign exchange or equities, just like fiat money;
- Usable: cities such as Stockholm are going purely digital, so a digital city currency could be massively adopted quickly.
The newest Glasgow digital currency
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:
- It has the regional size and population: this could make the difference compared to smaller cities such as Dundee;
- It has a high record of academia, government and business working together. This unity could be great to manage a new-born digital currency
- Glasgow has a thriving financial base, moving to 74th in the world for financial centers and this demonstrates the city has a good base and an educated population to operationalize the new digital currency system.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
Polish Bitcoin regulators recognized it within the country
Polish Bitcoin regulators decided to recognize the digital currency within the country.
In fact, the country’s Central Statistical Office (GUS) revealed its decision to recognize the trading and mining of digital currencies as an official economic business in Poland.
This is the reason why from now on companies active in the Polish industry are be able to register themselves with the agency.
Businesses who are involved in cryptocurrency trade and production activities can now apply to obtain an official PKD 64.19.Z registration, the GUS explained in a press release.
This news highlights a significant step forward for industry workers in Poland where currently there isn’t an official regulation or legislation about neither bitcoin or other digital currencies.
Earlier this year the Polish Ministry of Finance released a few documents that expressed the status of legality for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general.
Also, in a statement published back in November, the finance ministry commented what follows:
“there is a lack of a general, legal definition of virtual currency in international, European and national law”.
This explains that digital currencies are subjected to income tax, even if they are not subject to any separate regulation according to the Polish legislation.
Polish ministry also commented:
“It should also be stressed here that their use in Poland is fully legal.”
Polish Bitcoin studies
To explore the legal and financial implications of the use of the Polish Bitcoin use, government of Poland has created a new group of blockchain and virtual currencies experts.
This Polish Bitcoin task force was established under the surveilance of the Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs, and according to thePolish government’s program titled “From Paper To Digital Poland“ that was written by the Cabinet back in June 2016.
This task force will be responsible to prepare analyses for use by other government agencies in their legislative work and the possible chance of a Polish Bitcoin and digital currencies regulation is one of its goals and interests.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
Bitcoin Prices are trading above $950
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.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
Shopping with Bitcoin: read the ultimate guide
Today I want to help you to start doing shopping with Bitcoin. Thanks to this method you can buy everything you want online, saving money and time.
Also, you will be able to avoid frauds that are very common on Internet, unfortunately.
First of all, you need a cryptocurrency wallet as a safe place to store your Bitcoin. You can open it now for free here.
Bitcoin Virtual Credit Card
To stard doing shopping with Bitcoin you can easily open a bitcoin virtual credit card on our new platform called HolyTransaction Trade.
Not all the e-commerce platforms you can find online accept Bitcoin, so this is an instant and cheap way to create a virtual credit card with Bitcoin and buy everything you want from your favorite online store.
You can use a virtual credit card everywhere a Visa credit card is accepted among the payment methods.
Also, to read more about all the benefits of a bitcoin virtual credit card, click here.
Shopping with Bitcoin on Purse and eGifter
As you can see on the HolyTransaction.com menu, you can directly open your Purse card from your HolyTransaction Wallet.
You just need to click on “Spend” and then on “Purse” or “eGifter”.
Purse is a fast way to do shopping with Bitcoin on Amazon, also saving from 5% to 15% on millions of products. To do so you just need to create an online gift card on Purse and start doing shopping.
eGifter is another way to do shopping with Bitcoin, buying from hundreds of gifts cards with your favorite digital currency. You can do it directly from our website, by depositing the bitcoins stored in your wallet on the eGifter website.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
Halcash Bitcoin: buy and sell with ATMs in Spain
Holytransaction Trade is a new virtual exchange to convert your Bitcoin into fiat currencies and vice versa, offered by the HolyTransaction wallet company.
You would think that Holytransaction Trade is a service that can be found anywhere on the web to sell and buy bitcoins. But it is not true, as HolyTransaction Trade allows you to do much more.
HalCash Bitcoin ATM in Spain
On HolyTransaction Trade you can convert bitcoin into fiat currencies and pick them up physically in a banking ATM.
Thanks to a partnership with HalCash, in fact, you can convert your Bitcoin into Euro and withdraw cash in every banking ATM (only banks that are members of HalCash’s network) based both in Spain and Poland with a total of more than 10,000 ATMs in Europe.
HalCash Bitcoin withdrawal process is very simple and you can do it in a few steps following the official guide provided by HolyTransaction.
Instead of typical platform, Holytransaction Trade will provide you an instant exchange as soon as the deposit is confirmed on the Bitcoin network.
Also, the newest HolyTransaction platform allows you to buy Bitcoin in Spain with Teleingreso, a fast, easy and secure payment option that allows you to buy Bitcoin through its network of more than 3000 ATM machines, 2000 post offices and 300 retail outlets.
When you select Teleingreso as online payment method, the system automatically generates a unique 9-digit transaction code. The transaction is pending until you visit any of the locations to make a payment, and then the information is instantly provided to us.
To use HolyTransaction Trade, you don’t need a wallet on HolyTransaction.com.
In fact, to use HolyTransaction Trade there is no need of registering on the platform and you can also use our exchange platform if you have a different wallet provider.
Also, the newest HolyTransaction platform allows you to create a prepaid virtual visa card with Bitcoin to buy everything you want online, as almost every e-commerce accepts VISA payments.
HolyTransaction Trade for mobile
Each service is available and works in less than 24h, and can also be done on your smartphone, using the HolyTransaction Trade app you can download on Google Play for free.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
How to Store Bitcoin: Easy Multicurrency Wallet
If you are a newbie, maybe you are asking yourself the following question: how to store Bitcoin? Which is the safer and cheapest wallet on the web? Why should I open a multicurrency wallet?
Well, today I want to answer people who are trying to start using Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general.
First of all, wallet stores a private key that you need to access a bitcoin address for storing and spending your digital currencies.
Bitcoin is a distributed and revolutionary method of payment also defined as Internet of Money as it is a virtual currency without any physical attribution.
So, how to store Bitcoin? We store fiat cash in a physical wallet and Bitcoin works in a similar way, as you will need a virtual wallet.
As well as Euro or Dollar are physical and should be stored in a physical wallet, so bitcoin are virtual and shall be kept in an equally virtual wallet.
If I have to be more specific, you don’t technically store bitcoin anywhere. What you store is the secure digital key you need to have in order to access your public bitcoin addresses and execute transactions.
How to store Bitcoin in a Web wallet
HolyTransaction is a web wallet where you can store your private keys online, on a computer, and connected to the Internet, of course.
One of the main advantages of a web wallet is that you can access them from anywhere and on any device you are using.
Security and Privacy
To create your web wallet you just have to enter your email address. You don’t need to have a bank account or send your ID card, so you can set up it in just one minute.
One way to protect your wallet is encryptit it with a strong password. This will make it difficult to access to your funds.
Also, you can use a two factor authentication code. In this case you should download a free app called “Google Authenticator” on your mobile phone and scan the QR code obtained. Then everytime you need to execute a transaction you’ll have to enter the two-factor authentication code. And, of course, this will make your wallet safer.
Multicurrency Wallet
A Multicurrency wallet is a virtual wallet where you can store different kinds of digital currencies within the same place.
If you have multiple cryptocurrencies, you typically have to manage multiple wallets for each one. This could be a time consuming task. With HolyTransaction, since it supports several digital currencies, you don’t have to manage a few wallets and you can just log into one wallet and toggle between them in one user interface, making the task much easier.
So, with just one registration and only one password to remember, you can store not only Bitcoin but also the other major cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Zcash, Dash, TetherUS, Monero and Dai Stablecoin.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.