Former US Mint Chief: Bitcoin a serious challenge to government money
body responsible for producing the country’s physical coins, made waves
in the bitcoin community this week when he took to Twitter to voice his
enthusiasm for digital currencies.
$2.6B fine ‘won’t do much damage’: Credit Suisse CEO. It’s time banks got competition. Time for cryptocurrencies. http://t.co/OT3dBTDlrq
— Edmund Moy (@EdmundCMoy) May 22, 2014
However, Moy didn’t stop there. The former member of the Department of Homeland Security took to his blog on 23rd May to issue an entire post on how bitcoin is leading to “a revolution in payment systems”.
“Bitcoin,
and the ideas behind it, will be a disruptor to the traditional notions
of currency. In the end, currency will be better for it.”
full post lightheartedly addressed bitcoin and its strengths and
weaknesses, with Moy offering a perhaps surprisingly optimistic
assessment of how the technology will impact the global financial
marketplace.
Bitcoin removes government monopolies
most notably, Moy suggested that digital currencies can even help
prevent some of the more severe drawbacks associated with fiat
currencies. In particular, he predicts it will eliminate what he views
as the government monopoly on money, writing:
“It has a
low risk of collapse unlike a sovereign government’s currency (just ask
the Greeks or more broadly, the European Union).”
Bitcoin an innovative means of exchange
“As
a medium of exchange, bitcoin offers several unique innovations to
currency: global nature, infinite divisibility and easy to carry.”
today’s transaction systems “archaic”, he argued that bitcoin’s ability
to divide effortlessly would allow for new methods of monetization via
micropayments, and that it could eliminate existing barriers to global
markets.
Bitcoin will be a safe store of value
he took aim at critics of the idea who believe that government-backed
alternatives are perhaps more secure, saying that the US dollar is
driven mostly by market demand.
bitcoin could even allow governments the ability to dedicate more time
to monetary policy that could positively impact their economies should
it reach its full potential.
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What are Bitcoin nodes and why do we need them?
peer-to-peer (P2P) network. However, what’s often lost in translation is
the sheer amount of machinery that is needed to maintain this global
infrastructure.
transactions, bitcoin requires more than a network of miners processing
transactions, it must broadcast messages across a network using ‘nodes’.
This is the first step in the transaction process that results in a
block confirmation.
network must not only provide an avenue for transactions, but also
remain secure. By using a number of randomly selected nodes, the network
can reduce the problem of double spending – when a user attempts to spend the same digital token twice.
bitcoin doesn’t just need nodes, it requires lots of fully functioning
nodes – nodes that have the bitcoin core client on a machine instance
with the complete block chain. The more nodes there are, the more secure
the network is.
Waning support
at a 60-day chart of bitcoin nodes shows that the number has gone down
significantly. It went from 10,000 reachable nodes in early March to
below 8,000 at the beginning of May.
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Source: Bitnodes |
interesting is that during a recent 24-hour period, the number of
reachable nodes went down from 8,200 to 7,600 and back to 8,200 again.
This suggests that a portion of users running nodes are turning off
their machines at night, meaning that this contingent of nodes are being
run on desktops or laptops.
 |
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Source: Bitnodes |
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A map based on Bitnodes data. Source: Coinviz |
Lack of incentive
running a bitcoin node does not provide any incentive. The only benefit
for someone to run a node is to help protect the network, and based on
the Bitnodes data, the number of people interested in supporting the
network with a full node is waning.
Centralization of mining
terms of supporting the bitcoin network, it used to be a lot easier for
the average user to participate. However, the advent of massive ASIC
data centres has weakened the consensual nature of mining, and by
extension providing nodes, for many people.
“As
bitcoin grows, so does the network and the computing power behind the
scenes required to run it. The majority of bitcoiners won’t be able to
support their own nodes and will be taken over by companies like KnC.”
pushing bitcoin towards a more centralized future. McKelvie also
believes that major technology companies that take interest in bitcoin
will have to put their computing resources behind the digital currency:
“I
wouldn’t be surprised if we see large tech companies like Google and
Amazon throwing resources at bitcoin as they adopt the currency.”
Feedback from nodes
sees the issue of nodes dropping from 10,000 down to under 7,000 as a
significant problem. To Hearn, the core of the issue is disinterest in
both expending computing resources and electricity toward something that
may have diminishing value.
Hearn has proposed added functionality that would allow communications
between nodes and the developers to better understand why so many are
dropping out.
is because their number will continue to decline no matter what – and
they appear to only be working when users are awake during the day.
“It
makes [the bitcoin network] ‘seem’ bigger, more robust and more
decentralised, because there are more people uniting to run it. So
there’s a psychological benefit.”
Moving forward
believes that community attention to the lack of nodes supporting the
network is what the industry needs in order to boost numbers:
“I agree we need more full nodes. I’ve long been a proponent of such calls for more nodes.”
such calls for voluntary support might not be enough motivation for
people to do so, though, so, one logical idea that has been floated is
to give nodes some sort of incentive.
feasible right now: over the past six months, miners have been
averaging a daily reward of 15.98 BTC per day, according to Blockchain.
bitcoin prices would peg that value at around $7,040 per day for the
entire network – and the growth in transaction fees has been incredibly
flat over the past six months. As a result, miners would likely be
reluctant to concede any revenue to bitcoin nodes, which don’t require
pricey ASIC hardware to run.
 |
|
Transaction fees on the network for past six months. Source: Blockchain |
of the bitcoin community seem to be losing interest in hosting full
nodes. And it’s something to pay attention to, because over time it
might mean that the major companies in the industry may have to pick up
the slack.
the network as full nodes, though, it continues to lessen the amount of
decentralization the network has at an infrastructure level.
is all down to circumstances surrounding bitcoin sentiment – the rise of
ASICs, the selloffs in China and complete collapse of Mt. Gox – plus
little in the way of incentives for someone to run a node.
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Marc Andreessen: In 20 years, we’ll talk about Bitcoin like we talk about the Internet today
(WashingtonPost) The investor and Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen thinks we’ll
all look back in 20 years and conclude that Bitcoin was as influential a
platform for innovation as the Internet itself was. He says that tech
companies think their meetings with President Obama on privacy are a
waste of time. And he calls net neutrality a “lose-lose.” In a
wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post this week, Andreessen
painted a picture of a future that’s distributed, messy and fraught
with tension. Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation.
Is there anything that Washington has built a wall against in terms of progress?
Well, the big thing right now for the tech industry is the Snowden
revelations, and the consequences of that for the American tech
industry. Specifically, in two areas: One is that the level of trust
that customers have [in] American tech companies has been seriously
damaged. And that is especially — but not exclusively — true outside the
United States. Every time another revelation comes out, like the one
this weekend about hijacking the routers on their way out of the country, or the one about hacking into the Internet companies’ backbone networks — every time one of these shoes drops, and apparently there is just an unlimited
number of shoes — every time one of these things happens, it’s a
serious blow to the credibility of these companies, especially outside
the U.S. And so there’s a really big, I mean very, very, very high level
of concern in the Valley that the American tech industry is in trouble
outside the U.S.
And then, two is this balkanization of the Internet that’s happening
now. As more revelations happen, more and more countries are saying:
“Okay, if we can’t trust the Internet, if the NSA is going to watch
everybody on the Internet all the time, we’re going to have to break off
and have our own Internet. Have our own firewalls, do what the Chinese
do, have our own private Internet or whatever the hell it’s going to
be.” This issue is being used as political cover for what these countries want to do anyway.
That brings us to, “Okay, how is the American government getting in
front of this?” And the answer is, “Not even a little bit.” The view in
the Valley is that the White House has hung the NSA out to dry. Just
like, “You’re on your own.” And there’s basically no effective
communication right now that I’m aware of between the American
government, especially the administration and American tech companies,
on like, “Okay, what happens now?”
There isn’t?
No.
Those meetings that occurred, that’s just for show?
Yeah, people come back, and they’re like, “Nothing happened.” The
Obama administration does not seem to have any real — they don’t seem to
have a plan. They seem to be in the mode of they kinda hope that it
goes away. And they hope that if they get face time with the execs they
can just mollify everybody and over time, the issue will just dissipate.
But I’m not aware of any substance that’s come out of those meetings.
I’m not aware of anybody who’s come back from those meetings saying:
“Okay, now there’s a plan. Now we know what’s going to happen.” It’s
been the opposite. It’s been people saying, “I don’t even know why I
went.”
Is there anything tech companies can do, whether on the Snowden stuff, or culturally?
These technologies escalate the power of government, but they also
escalate the power of business, and they also escalate the power of
individuals. So everyone’s been upgraded. And it’s a recalibration of
who can do what, and everybody can do new things, so everybody’s uneasy
about it. Governments are very worried about what citizens are going to
be able to do with these new technologies. Citizens are very worried
about what governments are going to do, and everybody’s worried about
what businesses are going to do. It’s this three-way dynamic that’s
playing out. And so for any of these individual issues, it’s not just
“What is one leg of this triangle going to be doing?” It’s, “What are all three of them going to be doing, and how will the tension resolve itself?”
Any thoughts on all these mergers that are being announced?
Not specifically on the mergers.
Or net neutrality?
So, I think the net neutrality issue is very difficult. I think it’s a
lose-lose. It’s a good idea in theory because it basically appeals to
this very powerful idea of permissionless innovation. But at the same
time, I think that a pure net neutrality view is difficult to sustain if
you also want to have continued investment in broadband networks. If
you’re a large telco right now, you spend on the order of $20 billion a
year on capex. You need to know how you’re going to get a return on that
investment. If you have these pure net neutrality rules where you can
never charge a company like Netflix anything, you’re not ever going to
get a return on continued network investment — which means you’ll stop
investing in the network. And I would not want to be sitting here 10 or
20 years from now with the same broadband speeds we’re getting today. So
the challenge, I think, is to accommodate both of those goals, which is
a very difficult thing to do. And I don’t envy the FCC and the
complexity of what they’re trying to do.
The ultimate answer would be if you had three or four or five
broadband providers to every house. And I think you actually have the
potential for that depending on how things play out from here. You’ve
got the cable companies; you’ve got the telcos. Google Fiber is
expanding very fast, and I think it’s going to be a very serious
nationwide and maybe ultimately worldwide effort. I think that’s going
to be a much bigger scale in five years.
So, you can imagine a world in which there are five competitors to
every home for broadband: telcos, cable, Google Fiber, mobile carriers
and unlicensed spectrum. In that world, net neutrality is a much less
central issue, because if you’ve got competition, if one of your
providers started to screw with you, you’d just switch to another one of
your providers.
There’s more and more integration between Bitcoin and the
financial services sector. But a lot of people who support Bitcoin
supported it because it was sort of disconnected from the infrastructure represented by government and everything else.
So we sort of have a theory on this, on where really disruptive
technologies come from. So the really new disruptive technologies come
from the fringe. This was true of PCs. Steve Jobs was, like, a
hippie. Internet came from the fringe. No big technology company thought
the Internet was going to be important, right up until basically 1995
or 1996.
Bitcoin is the classic instance of that. Bitcoin didn’t come from
Citibank; it didn’t come from the Federal Reserve; it didn’t come from
Visa. It came from the fringe. And now Bitcoin is in the early stages of
mainstreaming today. And the signs that it’s in the early stages of
mainstreaming are mainstream venture capital firms funding mainstream
startups, employing mainstream engineers to build services that’ll be
used by mainstream people. You’ve got big companies that are not yet
doing a lot with it, but are looking very seriously at it. So every big
bank has people that are trying to figure out what to do with Bitcoin;
every big e-commerce company has people that are trying to figure out
Bitcoin. You have mainstream regulators figuring it out; you’ve got
people at the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury Department and IRS that
are figuring it out. At the state level, people are engaged on it. And
so, it’s in the early stages of mainstreaming.
It’s already happening.
Anybody who thinks Bitcoin makes it easier to do transactions that aren’t
tracked by the government is 100 percent wrong. The transactions all
happen in public view. Anybody can look at the entire ledger and verify
who owns what. So if you’re a law enforcement agency or an intelligence
agency, this is a much easier way to track the flow of money than cash.
So I think actually law enforcement and intelligence agencies are going
to wind up being pro-Bitcoin, and libertarians are going to wind up
being anti-Bitcoin.
For [journalists], the big challenge has been explaining what
Bitcoin is to people. And I think we’ve always explained it as a
currency, but does that — now that people know about it in terms of a
currency, does that prevent them from [grasping Bitcoin’s full
potential]?
I have a lot of friends who are programmers. The programmers have always gone like, “Those [Bitcoin] guys are crazy.”
And then, almost 100 percent of the time, they sit down, read the paper,
read the code — it takes them a couple weeks — and they come out the
other side. And they’re like: “Oh my god, this is it. This is the big
breakthrough. This is the thing we’ve been waiting for. He solved all
the problems. Whoever he is should get the Nobel prize — he’s a genius.
This is the thing! This is the distributed trust network that the
Internet always needed and never had.”
So, one of the challenges is you take people who aren’t
professional programmers or mathematicians and then you expect them to
understand it from a standing start. And it’s daunting. And so then it
gets a word attached to it, like “currency” or whatever you want to call
it, and then people think that it is something it isn’t. And you have a
sense of this, but it’s a much deeper concept than currency. It’s the
idea of distributed trust.
So the business opportunity posed by this “distributed trust
network” — as an investor, what do you see that you could potentially —
Hundreds or thousands of applications and companies that could get built on top.
Is this, like, a billions-of-dollars kind of industry?
Yeah.
Trillions…?
Yeah! (Laughs, steeples his fingers Mr. Burns-style). Yeeeah… (Laughs) I have the haircut, I can do it.
Digital stocks. Digital equities. Digital fundraising for companies.
Digital bonds. Digital contracts, digital keys, digital title, who owns
what — digital title to your house, to your car. Like for example, you
get a digital title on a car, attached to a digital key, where you own
your car on the Bitcoin blockchain and on your smartphone. The key for
opening your car and starting your car is tied to that title. And if I
sell you my car, automatically you get title, and you get the key that
lets you operate the car, and it’s all digital, and it’s all unique, and
it can’t be cracked. You’ve got digital voting, digital contracts,
digital signatures. You’ve got unique pieces of digital content. If you
guys wanted to know exactly who had every piece of content you ever
made, you can track that. It’s this long list. And then every aspect of
financial services: insurance contracts, insurance derivatives, currency
exchange, remittance — on and on and on. It gives you a chance to
basically go after this very broad category of online business in a new
way. And, by the way, if we had had this technology 20 years ago, we
would’ve built it into the browser.
E-commerce would’ve gotten built on top of this, instead of getting
built on top of the credit card network. We knew we were missing this;
we just didn’t know what it was. There is no reason on earth for anybody
to be on the Internet today to be typing in a credit card number to buy
something. It’s insane, because — which is why you have all these
security problems, the Target hack and all this crazy…. And these high
fees, this high fraud rate. It doesn’t make sense online to have a
payment mechanism that requires you to hand over your credentials to
make a payment. That’s just an invitation to fraud and identity theft.
It’s just stupid.
But we didn’t have the better way of doing it. So we didn’t know what
else to do, and now we have the better way of doing it. Now, it’s going
to take time. We’re quite confident that when we’re sitting here in 20
years, we’ll be talking about Bitcoin the way we talk about the Internet
today. We just need time for it to play out.
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Bitcoin used to buy $500,000 Kansas home
they knew it was pretty cool,” he said. “This seemed like a good test of
how far the currency has come.”
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| When Josh Zerlan went looking for a new home, he originally didn’t think about using a bitcoin to buy it. |
banks take their cut. They take a fee, you end up paying quite a bit of
money. With bitcoin, you don’t have to pay any of those fees, and it is
an instant transfer,” he said.
with his knowledge of it, so we took the plunge,” Tim Hoelting said.
bitcoins, although more than 30,000 businesses currently take them
online.
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Federal reserve advisory council sheds positive light on Bitcoin
In February, much of the community rejoiced when Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen insisted that the regulatory entity had no authority to when it came to the digital currency.
A recently obtained document from a Federal Reserve Advisory Committee meeting early this month has shed some light on this very topic, in return, revealing exactly how the Fed plans on reacting to the relatively new and emerging technology.
The Federal Advisory Council and Board of Governor’s record of meeting devoted a special section of the outline to bitcoin specifically. Among the key topics of concerns listed in respect to the digital currency were whether or not bitcoin has the potential to cause the “disruption of traditional channels of commerce with high potential for illicit use.” In respect to banking, the document also questions the possible “disintermediation of traditional payment networks, promoting shadow transacting.”
In the eyes of the Fed, indications point that the outlook is unanimous in that rather than posing as threat, bitcoin, with increased regulation, may hold promise:
Bitcoin does not present a threat to economic activity by disrupting traditional channels of commerce; rather, it could serve as a boon … Its global transmissibility opens new markets to merchants and service providers … Driving capital flows from the developed to the developing world should increase consumption.
The Federal Advisory Council (FAC) is comprised of twelve elite representatives of the banking industry. The committee meets four times a year, as required, to consult with and advise the Board on all matters within the Board’s jurisdiction. The overall rhetoric among the committee is that the board echoes the voice of Silbert in that the current financial institutions will play a key role in bitcoin’s future. The FAC ‘s conclusion was that, “should [bitcoin] adoption accelerate, banking could participate increasingly in bitcoin fund flows, especially as multicurrency accounts proliferate and reputational concerns subside.”
The FAC’s stance on bitcoin supports a reversal in the plethora of bad news encompassing the digital currency. Following easing tensions in China, the wildly successful Bitcoin2014 conference in Amsterdam, which delivered a surplus of positive news along with several major announcements, bitcoin has surged in value over that past several hours. Prices on Bitstamp rose from an opening of $448.34, while spiking as high as $500.00 mid-day as optimism surrounding the digital currency continues to influence bitcoin’s value.
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Winklevoss twins betting Bitcoin will be bigger than Facebook
(NewsBTC) The duo — who infamously won a multimillion dollar settlement from
Facebook following claims Mark Zuckerberg had ripped off their idea —
says that bitcoin could very well become bigger than Facebook, says The Guardian.
|
| The Winklevoss twins are betting big on bitcoin. |
Facebook, of course, is the world’s largest social network — with a user base exceeding one billion.
The two came to learn about bitcoin whilst on holiday in Ibiza, saying they were “fascinated from day one.”
And while bitcoin’s $5.67 billion market cap doesn’t come close to
touching Facebook’s $150 billion cap, the Winklevosses put their faith
in the digital currency for the reason that it has more potential to be
more impactful than a social network.
“Bitcoin potentially could be more impactful because being able to
donate 50 cents to someone across the world has more impact than
potentially sharing a picture,” said Tyler Winklevoss.
“But they’re very different. Facebook is like the internet – a large
company and an application. Bitcoin is a protocol for decentralisation,
so you could build a decentralised company on top of it, a stock market.
It’s an internet of ownership, so it’s not quite a direct comparison.”
For critics who point to bitcoin’s volatility as a reason it can
never be widely successful, the twins say that’s basically a
non-statement.
“Unregulated assets with unclear regulatory landscapes are always
going to be volatile. That’s what unregulated assets do,” said Tyler,
who points to the early days of the Internet as an example of a
technology that can go from an enthusiast’s interest to a worldwide
phenomenon.
The twins, who are working on the own bitcoin ETF (and also recently launched a price index) predict that this is the year Wall Street becomes heavily involved in the bitcoin-o-sphere.
Already, we’re seeing incredibly amounts of investor interest,
especially in the wake of two major price spikes that eventually brought
the price of bitcoin above $1,000 late last year.
The Winklevosses are estimated to own one percent of bitcoins presently in circulation.
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Give $250,000 in Bitcoin, get second citizenship
with a Las Vegas escort.
Bitcoin these days.
that sets clients up with citizenship to balmy Caribbean island-nation St.
Kitts and Nevis, payable in cryptocurrency. St. Kitts and Nevis has offered a
‘citizenship by investment’ program since 1984 that accepts investment into the
local economy in exchange for a spanking-new passport.
isn’t cheap. Wannabe citizens must either buy local real estate worth $400,000
or more, or donate at least $250,000 to the Sugar Industry Diversification
Foundation (SIDF) – on top of a nonrefundable application fee of about $60,000
per applicant plus an additional $30,000 for each one of his or her dependents.
holding a St. Kitts passport offers a number of benefits. Aside from the
stunning seas, sands, and climate offered by the Caribbean country, St. Kitts doesn’t
take any income, wealth, or inheritance taxes; citizens get visa-free travel to
140 countries and a 10-year multiple-entry visa to the United States.
countries or ones with invasive policies on individual privacy, the citizenship
process offers more abstract benefits: freedom and privacy.
stories from around the globe about upheaval, increased taxes, and governments
exerting more and more control over citizens’ freedoms and privacy,” the
Passports for Bitcoin website says. “Having a second citizenship and passport
in a stable country is now a must in order to hedge against governmental
intrusion and excessive taxation.”
home countries aren’t notified that their citizens have applied for or received
a second citizenship.
Kitts passport with Bitcoin isn’t clear. The website of the project’s parent company,
International Investments & Consulting, Ltd., says it has processed over
100 applications, though it does not specify how they were paid for.
popular amongst the rich and famous. Roger Ver, an American Bitcoin
entrepreneur and ‘angel investor’ in Bitcoin startups, has bought himself a
passport to St. Kitts, as has as the so-called “Most
Interesting Man on Instagram” millionaire/poker player/playboy Dan
Bilzerian.
ago as a hedge against possible world political turmoil which could negatively
affect the United States,” Bilzerian wrote in a testimonial
on the Passports for Bitcoin website. “I value freedom more than almost
anything else and a second or third passport provides me insurance just in case
the U.S. government decides to value security over freedom.”
St. Kitts citizenship last month after fleeing the country under pressure from
the government over data protection and privacy.
passport in Bitcoin.
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Bitcoin’s youngest entrepreneurs and educators
money in digital currency and skilfully using it for in-game purchases,
tipping buddies on reddit and other really cool things which have yet to
be invented.
there are a few enterprising youngsters here and there who have already
discovered the advantages of bitcoin, are using it, and are even making
generous amounts of pocket money from it.
A swarm of talent
 |
| Image via Bees Brothers |
Hailing
from Cache Valley, in northern Utah, three brothers between the ages of
11 and 15 have their own successful honey business at home in the Cache
Valley.
swarm of bees as an experiment. Little did they know it would lead to a
small business and an obsession with bitcoin.
says they had no intention of starting a business. “As we started
working with honey and beeswax we started making new things for
ourselves, and eventually got a small business licence, more honeybee
hives, and started selling our items at our local Farmer’s Market,” he
said.
attracted by the concept of a decentralised, non-inflationary
currency. The ideals behind bitcoin seem to align with those of the
Huntzinger family.
father admits they have a different view of education. “We don’t believe
that government has a monopoly on education, nor that the only way to
learn is being forced to sit at a desk all day and stare at a book […]
The whole purpose of getting that first hive, and later the business
licence, was all about education. What would happen if we did this…?”
answer is a flourishing business and three boys learning about finance
and investing before they’ve even finished high school. Business is
booming. From selling pots of their honey locally, their company, Bees Brothers now
produces several different flavours of honey caramels, honey roasted
almonds, beeswax lip balms and candles both at the markets and via their
website. And all can be had for bitcoin, of course.
The publishing moguls
you’ll find a host of online tutorials, as well as the chance to buy a
host of books (using bitcoin) that explain the subject.
not the best part. The site and books, as well as a host of other blogs
and publications are all written by a trio of young sisters, who
describe themselves thus on their blog:
“We’re three
tech tweenpreneurs, also known as The Sabra Sisters. We were born in
2000, 2001 and 2003. We’ve been blogging since 2008, started making
money online in 2010, [and] became bestselling kindle authors in 2013.”
that they were all successful juvenile nonfiction authors, he
challenged the sisters to write a ’25 Fun Facts of Bitcoin’ book, which
eventually evolved into the five-book ‘Bitcoin for Kids‘ series.
immediately started researching into bitcoin and, less than 24 hours
later, surprised him with the launch of their brand new blog dedicated
to learning about the digital currency – the first post being entitled, ‘Yes, we’re interested Uncle I.J.‘ The rest as they say, is history.
girls generally divide up the different tasks required for the
publications, depending on their skills and preferences, but said JuJu:
“My sisters and I split up the various tutorials so everyone had a share in spending bitcoin and having fun. ;-)”
the home-schooled girls justifiably boast they are “professional
bloggers and bestselling authors”, with some credit given to their
mother Ponn – also a blogging professional – for her guiding input too.
the Sabra sisters have over two-dozen kindle books published, with an
astonishing 55,000 plus downloads during the past year, JuJu told
CoinDesk, adding:
“We rarely look at each individual title, but two books are our bestsellers making up nearly 40,000 of those downloads: ’Science Projects for Kids’ and the ’My First Smoothie Recipe Book’.”
Cuteness and cookies
Image via DorkusPrime/redditReddit
user DorkusPrime came across young entrepreneurs Mia and Taylor in
California back in January in the Noe Valley neighbourhood of San
Francisco. He posted a photo of the two little girls at their cookies and lemonade booth and it quickly became something of a web sensation.
adorable little girls just sold me snickerdoodles for Bitcoin in San
Francisco. I asked them to say cheese for the Internet :),” DorkusPrime wrote at the time.
The youngest bitcoin author
writer, Jaden Shelton (A.K.A. the Bitcoin Kid) claims to be “the
youngest author ever who has published a book offered only in bitcoin”.
“It was something funny that happened in my childhood – I used to not eat certain foods and we would say ‘are you scared of a blank?
I would say ‘no’ and we would keep joking around with it. A few years
later, we started thinking about making a book about it.”
promising TV presenter, Jaden has posted a series of videos in which he
interviews key staff at prominent digital currency businesses, such as
ripple, Mycelum and BitInstant.
“Well, you can’t buy anything unless you have a job, so I might be an entrepreneur … or maybe sell toys to kids.”
The shrewd investor
Karam isn’t your average nine-year-old. While most kids his age ask for
the latest must-have toy for their birthdays, Andrew requested shares
in Apple.
price of the stock with interest, checking regularly whether his
investment had gone up or down in value.
was incredibly excited about it and asked if I could take his Apple
stock and cash it out for BTC, so I made him a paper wallet and […]
bought a bit at a time,” Steve wrote in a post on reddit.
later told his teacher about his investment, revealing he had made
about $50 since his dad bought him some bitcoins. He said he was
originally thinking of cashing out 25% of his investment, but the savvy
youngster decided to hold on to his cryptocurrency.
to do more than just a talk at school to get his peers involved in
digital currency. So he asked his father whether he could sell bitcoins
to his classmates, then get them back by accepting BTC as payment for
his Wonder Bracelets, which he makes from colourful elastic bands.
story and enthusiasm struck a chord within the bitcoin community, with
some members of reddit making donations to the 4th grader.
said his son is “super excited” by all the support he is getting and
even commented that he wants to be a “professional millionaire” when he
grows up.
The chancer
Credit: ImgurAnd
finally, let us not forget the enterprising college kid who, in early
December 2013, made it onto TV holding up a sign with a bitcoin logo and
wallet QR code at ESPN’s ‘College GameDay’ game.
and caught the attention of the bitcoin community, who promptly sent
him a flurry of donations amounting to over $24,000 in bitcoin, some of
which he allegedly donated to Sean’s Outpost – a bitcoin-funded homeless outreach centre in Pensacola, Florida.
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George Soros sells out of J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup …. time for Bitcoin?
to several news sources billionaire George Soros recently sold nearly
all of his bank stocks, including shares of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup,
and Goldman Sachs. Between the three banks, Soros sold more than a
million shares. Billionaire John Paulson dumped 14 million shares of
JPMorgan Chase (appr. 750 million dollars). Other billionaires are pulling out of US stocks too.
surely there is a growing discomfort about the all time high levels of
stock market prices. Some are expecting a massive correction. Even if
there is no good reason for it, fear could make such predictions a
reality.At BitcoinOwl we of course speculate that the growing success of
crypto currencies and their promise to revolutionize the financial and
other systems could be a factor as well. Just like email threatened the
business model of the postal services and file sharing scared the music
labels, crypto currencies without a doubt cause some anxiety to
financial institutions who see Bitcoin as a competitor instead of an
opportunity to reinvent themselves.
It may take years before Bitcoin makes any noticeable dent in
Citigroup’s profits, but Bitcoin’s existence alone raises some
uncertainty about the future of such financial institutions and their
profit margins. Some players like Western Union have already been forced
to drop their fees drastically in response to Bitcoin’s extremely low
transaction fees.
The question is where does all that money pulled out of the stock
market will go? Many investors like Kevin O’Leary publicly said that
they’ve put a few percents of their money into Bitcoin already. His
Bitcoins were without a doubt his best performing asset in 2013. It’s
likely that most billionaires pulling out of the stock market will put a
small part of their wealth into crypto currencies as it’s highly
independent from other assets which is important for healthy
diversification.
Let’s just see how much money are we talking about. Let’s assume only
a fraction of those stock dollars will be funnelled into cryptos. Half
percent of NYSE’s total market cap is 83 billion dollars.
If 70% of that 0.5% would flow into Bitcoin it would increase BTC’s
market capital 7 fold raising the price of Bitcoin to over $5,000. If
10% of it went to Litecoin it would increase LTC’s market capital by 13
times raising the price to $325. And we’re talking about just 0.5% of
one stock exchange in the world.
Potentially it is also possible that the crash of stock market prices
will scare crypto currency investors too. Although, it’s hard for me to
find a plausible reason why this would happen.
It will be interesting to see how the predicted decline in the stock
market will influence the valuation of the popular crypto currencies.
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Japan to monitor Bitcoin rather than regulate it
(CoinReport) Japan’s involvement with bitcoin has taken a massive blow due to all of the negative press surrounding the Japanese failed bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox. Since then, warnings of the risks involved with dealing in the digital currency have been spread throughout the world by regulators and critics alike.
Japan Will Monitor Bitcoin
However, rather than placing specific laws or regulations attached to how the country should be allowed to use bitcoin, it will just monitor it instead. On Tuesday, the Japanese government claimed that regulating bitcoin wasn’t under their jurisdiction. Sources say that Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is devising a plan to make it easier to monitor illegal bitcoin activity. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his administration identify bitcoin as not being a form of currency. They do identify it as being an electronic payment method.
As most government officials and regulators do, Japan’s warn the public of bitcoin’s potential dangers, such as its uses in money laundering and drug trafficking.
Regulators Warn of Bitcoin
While Japan has no plans to enforce rules over bitcoin, other regulators feel that regulation over the digital currency is the only way for it to be safe enough for investors to get into. On the other hand, some feel bitcoin isn’t safe enough to implement into our economy, but for those that want in, they should do their homework first. Indiana Secretary of State, Connie Lawson claims that:
“The value of virtual currencies is highly volatile, and the concept behind the currency is difficult to understand even for sophisticated financial experts.”
Though this may be true in some cases, that doesn’t mean people can’t figure it out for themselves. Bitcoin was foreign to every enthusiast at one point in time. Like with all new concepts and innovations, time is needed to get acquainted with the technology. Once upon a time, even the Internet sounded dangerous and ludicrous idea. Regulators, whether in Japan or the U.S., need to stop putting fear in people and let bitcoin have an organic chance at success.
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