8 Jun
1
OpenBazaar Test: how the Bitcoin Ebay works
The Bitcoin Marketplace: OpenBazaar Test
Recently OpenBazaar, the decentralized marketplace where you can buy items for bitcoins, launched its new 1.1.6 version.
So we decided to do a OpenBazaar test, to let you deeply understand how it works and what you can buy on this innovative market using your cryptocurrencies.
Step-by-Step OpenBazaar Test: Follow this Guide to do some Shopping
1. First of all you need to go to the OpenBazaar website and click on the Download button you can find on the right top of the page.
2. A download will start soon. If it doesn’t, you just need to select your operating system such as Linux, Windows or Mac
3. After the download is completed, click on the file (maybe you will find it in the Download file) and launch it.
4. A new window will open where you have to complete your profile with info like name, timezone, avatar and your favorite currency.
5. You can also select your favorite theme to be used as a your profile template
6. Then you will be officially into your profile where you can add other info such as your social network profiles
7. Now you can start doing some shopping.
OpenBazaar has a simple interface, user-friendly enough to experiment and pay with your bitcoins.
Among the items you can find on this marketplace there is a wide range of the company’s merchandise, so I decided to support their cause by buying their pins.
8. As you can imagine, I just had to click on the item I wanted to purchase.
9. Then you just click on the “Buy Now” (“Compra ora” because my version is in Italian).
10. A windows will appear where they ask you if you already have a wallet (if not you can open it here).
11. Now you have to insert your public wallet address, you can find on your wallet among the settings.
During this process you can also create a temporary wallet address, useful if you can’t find your public wallet address and for security reasons you don’t want to disclose your private one.
12. OpenBazaar allows purchases from all around the world, but of course you need to pay extra bitcoins for the shipment.
For a shipment to Italy you need to pay an extra of about 0.0232 BTC, so I spent almost 17 EUR for that pin.
Bitcoin Wallet
As I said, you can purchase your items on OpenBazaar by using bitcoins; and to do so of course you need a wallet.
Open your on HolyTransaction and find out more on our wallet where you can store several different cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Peercoin, etc…
We call it a “Universal Wallet” for this reason.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
7 Jun
0
Halving and Bitcon price: there might be a hard fork problem
Bitcoin price continues to rise during this week, nearing the amount of $600.
In fact, bitcoin established a new positive trend during the past week, growing fast and surpassing $580 the last weekend.
Currently the Bitcoin price is $586, the highest price since August 10th, 2014, when it reached $589.
Bitcoin Price is growing
Previously we offered several reasons for this Bitcoin jump, as in the Chinese Domain article you can read here.
Data from the yuan/bitcoin market shows that the price reached a high of ¥3,866.11 ($589) there, so it would probably keep growing or remain stable.
Other experts in the bitcoin sector expressed different ideas, concerned about the problem that halving could lead to.
Hard Fork Problem
Recently we also read about the hard fork problem caused by the halving of the reward for miners.
In fact, when the halving will occur, the miner reward for new blocks will be lower (from 25 BTC to 12,5), but their expenses for electricity and hardware will remain the same, so their profits will drop.
This could generate a hard fork problem, as miners could leave the Bitcoin core Blockchain to work on other chain to increase their profits again.
In the meantime, in fact, the ethereum price for example surged 50% in a week.
Multicurrency Wallet
Usually, if you have to store different cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Peercoin, etc.) you need to have different wallets, which are difficult to manage.
HolyTransaction is here to solve your problem, with the possibility to create a single account.
So, do you want to store Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? Open here your wallet for free.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
6 Jun
0
Can the halving event cause a blockchain collapse?
The reward halving will arrive soon and some people believe that this event could boost the Bitcoin price.
But a miner of BitBank is concerned because he fears the halving might lead to a collapse of the entire blockchain validation system.
In fact, founder of the Chinese Bitbank Chandler Guo fears that if the price of bitcoin does not appreciate significantly before or immediately after halving, too much of the hashrate will drop off the network due to unprofitable mining, making transaction verification virtually impossible.
Bitcoin Halving
This event happens every four year: in January 2009 every new block generated a reward of 50 BTC. In 2012 the reward will drop down to 25 BTC.
The reason of the halving existence is that there is a limit of 21 million of Bitcoin to be ever generated by the system, so it exists to keep its price consistent and to protect the cryptocurrency from inflation.
But this drop will cause a lowering in profit margins for miners, that’s why Guo believes that miners who use less efficient hardware will shut down as the reward is cut.
He explained:
“When halving comes the cost of the electricity is the same, so it must shut down. For example, the S3 is working 24 hours, they cost $1, for example, and they can mine $1. So if mining equipment can only mine the electricity payment, they don’t need to work.”
Miners calculate their income as the difference between their reward and their electricity and machines cost; in order to maximize their profit, they need more hashing power at a given electricity cost.
To calculate the hashing power needed, Satoshi Nakamoto created an equation in the code so it can analyze how much hashing power is on the network and increase – or decrease – the difficulty.
This is the reason why Guo is concerned: if more hashing power is added, blocks can be found sooner, increasing profits for miners and speeding up the time at which difficulty must be raised. But now the risk he foresees is exactly the opposite:
“When the difficulty doesn’t change, but the hashing power shuts down immediately, there will be no next block. If, after the halving, the price does not go up, but the prices goes down, there will be heartache. It means no next block, no blockchain, all of the blockchain will be shut down immediately.”
So, if a significant share of the hashing power were to drop off the network, that would slow down the validation of blocks.
That would determine slower transactions, impacting on the confidence of the network. A crisis of confidence would generate a sell-off, causing a fall of the bitcoin price that would push more miners to the shut down, thus further reducing the hashing power and eventually leading to a total collapse.
A Different Perspective
Some other players in the mining business don’t agree with Guo.
That’s the case of Bobby Lee, CEO of BTCC, the third-largest bitcoin mining pool that controls roughly 16% of the hashrate. Lee believes that even though a drop in hashrate is likely to happen, it won’t be as significant as Guo thinks.
“After mining, for sure the hashrate will come down a bit, it will probably come down by 5-10%. It won’t come down by more than 30%. We’ve seen it in other cryptocurrencies that at a block halving, the hashrate does come down. That’s expected,” he explained to Coindesk.
Another of the main mining companies, BitFury, doesn’t seem concerned about the halving.
“The important point is that the hashrate decline will not compromise the security of the network and will not make it susceptible to attack. We also firmly believe the upcoming halving event is good for the industry because it will motivate Bitcoin companies to innovate,” said Valery Vavilov, CEO of BitFury.
One thing is sure: if the price will to rise when the halving occurs, there won’t be a problem, because miners will continue to be rewarded enough to cover their cost and maintain profitability.
Multicurrency Wallet
Normally, if you want to store several different cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Peercoin, etc.) you need to have different wallets, which is difficult to manage.
HolyTransaction want to solve this problem, unifying everything in a single account.
So, do you want to store Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? Open here your wallet for free.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
3 Jun
0
Bitcoin price future: it is alive and well
How many times did you hear about the death of Bitcoin? About 45 according to a recent twitter post we found very funny.
Well, according to us, Bitcoin seems to be alive and well, and there are lots of positive signs that indicate that this cryptocurrency is not dead as everybody thought.
The Bitcoin price, in fact, is now $549 (according to Bitstamp, or one of the most used exchanges in the world).Update: Bitcoin price is reaching $700 today, on June 13rd, 2016.
This means that the price rose more than 20% in the last 7 days, reaching a 1 year high, as we can see from the Bitcoin price index of Coindesk.
Reason of the Bitcoin Price jump
We tried to understand the reason behind this jump.
Of course it is hard to find a unique answer, but we saw that probably the Bitcoin price was driven by the Chinese demand, testified by the bitcoin price on the Chinese local exchange, which reached a level of $580 when it was priced $520 on the international markets.
Another important reason could be the halving process, as you can read in this insightful analysis.
Positive news about Bitcoin
But there are other reasons to be positive about Bitcoin, as several companies such as Microsoft recently started to develp their own projects related to the blockchain.
Also, several countries such as Japan started to regulate and recognize bitcoin as an official method of payment. Furthermore, Switzerland began to accept Bitcoin for Public Services.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
2 Jun
0
The newest Richard Branson’s Blockchain Event
The well-known founder of Virgin Group, Richard Branson has organized a new blockchain-related event on his private island in the Carribbean.
Among his about 40 guests there are: Beth Moses, engineer for the Virgin Galactic; Laurent Lamothe, former prime minister of Haiti; Jim Newsome, former chairman at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission; and Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO at BitPesa.
This is the second year for the Branson’s Blockchain Event on his Necker Island, also thanks to the support of the mining company BitFury.
BitFury CEO Valery Vavilov explained:
“Our emphasis for this year’s gathering is to bring some of the world’s top thinkers from diverse backgrounds – civil society, [non-governmental organizations], business, technology, government – to this extremely special place known for free thinking and cutting edge innovation.”
Branson’s Blockchain Event
From 3rd to 7th June, guests will partecipate to this summit focused on three main topics: financial technology, security and global change.
Also, they will have a lot of networking time, a great opportunity to build connections.
Last year’s event generated some controversy about the lack of women, so this year the list includes several female experts who work in the blockchain field, as you can read on the guest list above.
Branson in Bitcoin
Of course this is not the first time Branson talks about Bitcoin.
A few months ago, during an interview on Bloomberg TV, he explained that this cryptocurrency is working well.
In a conversation with journalist Trish Regan about space tourism, Branson also commented positively on the future of the Bitcoin industry.
Multicurrency Wallet
Normally, if you want to store several different cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Peercoin, etc.) you need to have different wallets, which is difficult to manage.
HolyTransaction want to solve this problem, unifying everything in a single account.
So, do you want to store Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? Open here your wallet for free.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
1 Jun
0
Microsoft to launch an identity platform through the blockchain
The well-known tech giant Microsoft recently started a partnership with Blockstack Labs and ConsenSys to create an open-source platform to integrate both the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.
In today’s blog post published by Microsoft blockchain business strategist Yorke Rhodes III, in fact, he explained that the company will create an open source framework on Azure, where developers can build their own identity applications.
“Microsoft is collaborating with partners Blockstack Labs and ConsenSys, and developers across the globe on an open source, self-sovereign, blockchain-based identity system that allows people, products, apps, and services to interoperate across blockchains, cloud providers, and organizations. Our goal in contributing to this initiative is to start a conversation on blockchain-based identity that could improve apps, services, and more importantly, the lives of real people worldwide by enabling self-owned or self-sovereign identity”.
The possibility to connect this platform to both the Ethereum and the Bitcoin blockchain will take place thanks to Blockstack and uPort systems.
This partnership started during the ID2020 Summit held in New York a few weeks ago.
According to Rhodes, a first version of this framework will be launched within the end of the summer on the Azure platform.
Identity Problem in the Digital World
According to the post published by Rhodes, 1.5 billion people don’t have a proper identification.
And this makes it difficult for them to have a bank account or access to education and more services.
- 1.5B people are without proper identification, that’s one-fifth of the world’s population.
- One in three children under the age of five does not officially exist because their birth has not been recorded.
- Cumulatively, 230M children under the age of five have no birth certificate; this number is growing.
- 50M children are born without legal identity, the size of the UK, each year.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
31 May
0
Ethereum Micropayments: better than the Bitcoin ones?
Micropayments are one the most useful and important use-cases for bitcoin, but a similar system could arrive from Ethereum, a decentralized mining network and cryptocurrency created by Vitalik Buterin back in 2013.
Since the creation of Internet, micropayments have been impossible due to high fee costs and a lack of payment systems that could allow payments in decimals.
But with the invention of Bitcoin – so thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto – today there is a way to do micropayments, as the bitcoin has 8 decimals and payment fees are low; so it is now possibile to pay for digital contents and give a tip on the web.
In a study, the Wedbush Securities company predicted that bitcoin micropayments could be a $925bn market within the end of 2025.
Ethereum Micropayments
One of the first project to use the Ethereum network for micropayments was developed by the Heiko Hees, already CEO of BrainBot, a German startup that works in the smart contract and blockchain consulting sector.
His new project is called Raiden Network and could increase the Ethereum capacity.
Hees explains that his “Raiden network will scale up the Ethereum network from 25 transactions per second to more than 1 million transactions”.
According to him, in fact, Ethereum could be the biggest provider of micropayments because of its speed and because the transactions would cost less than with bitcoin.
A current problem for the bitcoin users is that blocks take up to 10 minutes to be processed.
Conversely, the Ethereum blockchain needs about 15 seconds for each block.
Bitcoin Lightning Network
In bitcoin there is a similar project called Lightning Network that was released in 2015 by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja – but this project is not live yet.
Thanks to off-chain transactions- the developers explained – Bitcoin could become easier to use and bring the technology’s capabilities to the next level – also it could be solve the blockchain scalability solve, they said.
However, users can move the off-chain transactions back to the blockchain anytime they want, giving them the ability to end every interaction.
Multicurrency Wallet
Normally, if you want to store several different cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Peercoin, etc.) you need to have ten different wallets, which is difficult to manage.
HolyTransaction want to solve this problem, unifying everything in a single account.
So, do you want to store Bitcoin and Ethereum ? Open here your wallet for free.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
30 May
0
Bitcoin rise driven by Chinese domain
On September 2015 when the bitcoin price was about $230 China figured out that Bitcoin could increase its popularity specially when the freeflow of capital out of China is growing fast and when gold is stored in China but it is impossible to take it out of the Chinese country.
And, in fact, some days ago the Bitcoin domain increased exponentially in China.
It is not clear if it happened because of the fear about a devaluation after Friday’s US Dollar move, or because the Chinese $30 trillion economy found a way to take it out of China.
However, Bitcoin finally has broken its long-term resistance, and right now its price is about $530 according to BitStamp.
This is the Bitcoin highest price since summer 2014.
Why is this happening?
It seems somenthing happened in China as the Bitcoin price in CNY on the local Chinese exchange rose as much as the equivalent of $580, much higher than the current US price of about $520.
This might indicate stronger Chinese demand for the digital currency.
So, maybe China starts to be conscious about bitcoin, as we could expect in September, when the bitcoin price was 50% lower than now.
The current bitcoin price is about 25% higher in the past days, and analysts expects it will keep growing in the next few days.
China, in fact, has $30 trillion in deposits – which concerns about devaluations will make very “flighty” while the market cap of bitcoin is under $8 billion.
If Chinese depositors have finally figured out to use bitcoin to get their funds out of the country, we need to watch out BTC shorts.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
29 May
0
Why the KnCMiners Bankruptcy might be a good news
The Sweden bitcoin mining company called KnCMiner announced its bankruptcy.
KncMiners was one of the greatest mining company who raised $15m in venture funding from Accel and Creandum, among the other investors back in 2015 after only two years of life.
Why KncMiners had to face Bankruptcy
One of the possible reason of this bankruptcy could be the three class-action lawsuit KnCMiner had to face recently.
But CEO Sam Cole denied any relationship between their bankruptcy and these recent lawsuits.
Cole, in fact, argues that the main reason for KnCMiner bankruptcy is the decrease of the bitcoin transaction rewards for miners.
“Effectively our cost of coin – how much we produce the coins for – will be over the market price. The price is now [roughly] $480. With all of our overhead, after July, the cost will be over $480. All of the liabilities we’ll have after that time will be too high”, explained Cole.
Why the Bitcoin Mining Company KnCMiners Bankruptcy might be a positive news
In a centralized economic system currency is issued by central banks who control the emission and the value.
Conversely, in a decentralized economy currency is not controlled by any central authority and this is the reason why – in the Bitcoin case, for example, in his whitepaper Satoshi Nakamoto suggested an algorithm to define when and how many new bitcoin can be created.
According to this algorithm the number of new bitcoins is set to decrease with a 50% reduction every 210000 blocks, or almost 4 years.
As a result, the number of bitcoins will not exceed 21 million.
As the number of bitcoins is set to decrease the same thing happens to the miners reward.
Thanks to a process called halving, the rewards drop down, as it happened back in 2012 when it took down from 50 to 25 BTC.
Now it is set to become 12.5 BTC in July.
For this reason the miners work is not so convenient anymore, so the number of miners is decreasing. Ans this means that the Bitcoin price will grow.
Also, a Bitcoin value is roughly $500, and miners cost of a new Bitcoin is more than $480 in energy and computer tools, so under that price it’s not worth doing it.
Halving process to help Bitcoin rising
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| Image Courtesy of Coindesk.com |
As for any scarce product, like gold or oil, the cost of extraction is one of the main elements that determine its price. If it increases, then the miners stops to do their jobs.
As a result the offer is reduced and its value rises.
Read here another interesting article about halving and watch here the countdown to the next reward drop.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
28 May
2
A task force to control digital currency in Europe
Last month we talked about how the European Parliament defined the blockchain as the “perfect technology” and aimed at realizing new rules related to the distributed ledger.
During a speech given by the Lithuanian representative Antanas Guoga, in fact, he defined the blockchain that way.
His speech was held before the Internal Market for Consumer Protection Committee, that advanced a new proposal for cryptocurrencies.
Task force creation: yes or not?
A voting on the proposal was held on April 26th and the result was 542-to-51 members who want the creation of a cryptocurrency task force.
So, now the task force will turn into reality and will “monitor technology developments ahead of any concrete regulatory proposals”.
Von Weizsäcker said in a statement:
“To avoid stifling innovation, we favour precautionary monitoring rather than pre-emptive regulation. But IT innovations can spread very rapidly and become systemic. That’s why we call on the Commission to establish a taskforce to actively monitor how the technology evolves and to make timely proposals for specific regulation if, and when, the need arises.”
It is likely that the creation of this task force will be done in the next few months.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.