Category: Bitcoin

Thailand Ends Year with Push for Cryptocurrency Education

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The last week of 2017 has been abuzz with activity especially in the world of crypto. Amidst bitcoin’s crazy price fluctuations as well as the launch of several ICO’s, Thailand also made headlines when the country’s government announced that its major regulators would be teaming up in a bid to educate the people about bitcoin. While this is primarily motivated by their not so subtle worry and speculation of the possibility that bitcoin could be a Ponzi scheme, it is quite clear that the project will go a long way in helping people not to drown in the bitcoin frenzy. At the moment, bitcoin is not a legal tender in Thailand and its central bank issued reminders on the same – however, it should get better soon considering the tremendous efforts that Thailand has been putting into grappling with financial technology through various regulations.

Thailand is among the world’s top twenty economies, an achievement that was made possible by the outstanding GDP it quietly racked up over the years. The country is well on its way to becoming the fintech hub of its region – in fact, this is an official government policy. In the fall, its Securities and Exchange Commission sought out public guidance to assist their efforts to manage initial coin offerings. While this might seem like a move that seeks to choke out innovation, the true intention was to protect Thai citizens from the myriad of scams that have flooded the internet ever since the onset of the cryptocurrency hysteria.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha reportedly wants to “educate people about the risks of bitcoin investment after the recent sharp surge in bitcoin’s trading value prompted him to worry that Thais would fall victim to cryptocurrency speculation.” Somchai Sujjapongse, a representative of Thailand’s Finance Ministry will see to this by joining forces with other authorities to educate people about bitcoin. Thais are quite eager to participate in the booming Bitcoin business as indicated by exchange volumes in the country that are at par with global trends.

According to Thai media, “There are 37 bitcoin brokers in Thailand registered on LocalBitcoins, some with more than 1,000 bitcoins in assets. Prices for bitcoin are about 13% higher in Thailand than in the US, a sign of high demand for this cryptocurrency.”

Still, we will just have to wait and see how this goes in 2018. Happy new year!

2017 Poker Wrap Up: Bitcoin, Hackers, and Ransoms

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As 2017 comes to an end we look back at some of the dark forces that afflicted the poker industry all through the year. When it comes to poker, it might still be too early to call it a year even if it is just a few more days to 2018 – it is one of the shakiest businesses in the world and anything can happen at any time. So, let us just delve into the events that shook the poker world most so far;

May’s Hack Jobs

The hackers targeted High-limit poker pros who they left defenseless by seizing control of their phones, Facebook and Twitter accounts. The poker pros who later publicly revealed that they had been the victims of hacking included Cate Hall, Dan Smith, Vanessa Selbst and Vanessa Russo. However, according to poker pro Doug Polk, the poker pros mentioned above were just a tiny fraction of the high-stakes community that had had their personal information stolen by hackers.

“The hackers have infiltrated bank accounts and tried to initiate wire transfers, used credit cards to rack up charges, gotten into Dropbox accounts containing copies of passports, credit cards, and tax returns, and extorted victims using incriminating information found in their email accounts,” Polk said in his popular YouTube channel.

Extortion

This was a result of hacking but this time it is not just individual players who were affected but a whole site – America’s Cardroom. The hacker demanded ransom forcing the site to cancel all ongoing tournaments and refund all player buy-ins in early September. The standoff which lasted for three days, however, played out in favor of Winning Poker Network CEO Phil Nagy who refused to pay the hacker saying:

“We had the attacker get on chat and say I am gonna attack you in one minute and he does the attack, but I will never pay an attacker I won’t pay a ransom, I won’t do it because once you let the bully get your lunch money, he’s taking your money all the time. Once they make you a bit*h, you are a bit*h, and I don’t like the idea of being a bit*h.”

Well Played!

Enter Crypto

Decentralized digital currencies have gained a lot of popularity in poker circles this year thanks to the buzz bitcoin has been creating. Cryptocurrencies have proven in a very short time that they are the key to turning an average poker bankroll into a massive pile of real money. In fact, a number of online poker sites are already supporting cryptocurrency transactions which come with the added advantages of reliability and unmatched processing speeds.

Still, we have to acknowledge the downsides of this particular arrangement by putting into consideration the unpredictable volatility of these cryptocurrencies – case in point, bitcoin. Crypto might be a savior thanks to the exceptional security associated with blockchain technology but a lot of this security is compromised when the decentralized currencies are hosted on centralized networks like poker sites. We wouldn’t that now, would we?

Blockchain Technology Hits Land-Based Casinos

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Very many online casinos have warmed up to the idea of integrating cryptocurrencies to their payment systems with nearly all of them investing millions in the rapidly developing crypto market. While the fact that casinos are embracing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies should come as no surprise, the rate of its growth has been somewhat overwhelmingly good. TheBitcoinStrip, an international analytic resource, estimates that currently about 60% of transactions in the Bitcoin network can be attributed to bets. It also estimates that the number of transactions made by gamblers every second is now well over the 337 mark. The escalation in the popularity of cryptocurrency in the gambling world is inevitable since gamblers will certainly prefer the security, absence of additional commissions and the unlimited withdrawals that bitcoin offers.

According to SmartPlay.tech the appearance of bitcoin, as well as other cryptocurrencies, is enough to completely revolutionize the casino industry both in the online space and in brick-and-mortar casinos;

“In order to completely revolutionize the gambling industry, it is necessary to integrate new generation technologies such as Blockchain and Lightning Network, which will make casino activities more profitable for the operator and attractive to the player. We have a technical solution based on the ready-made software, which we can offer to big players in the offline market in the form of full-fledged equipment.”

SmartPlay.tech recently announced its intention to unveil to land-based casinos a full line of new SmartBox machines that will connect a variety of games such as bingo, online slots, poker, and blackjack.

Basically, a SmartBox configuration will consist of a touch screen gaming table, a QR scanner for connecting crypto wallets and a terminal that will allow users to deposit fiat money. The most significant highlight of the boxes is the gambling software that they use – it is based on the principles of blockchain technology and has been successfully tested on a wide range of SmartPlay.tech products. Casino operators are particularly very impressed with the model of operational efficiency that the SmartBox machines present, that is, it ensures that profits are always higher than the costs incurred by the casino by optimizing transaction commissions to minimum market prices of a few cents.

The first batch of test machines has already been deployed for closed testing in a land-based casino where the performance indicators of blockchain technology in a real-world gambling environment will be measured. The tests’ deliverables include actual data that will include average spending, game time, turnover, number of players as well as the conceptual portrait of the target customer. If the results are as promising as they seem to be, then full-fledged production of SmartBox machines will commence.

Whales Cut Back as The Sharks Begin to Circle Bitcoin

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Bitcoin has yet again made the news as it always does with last Friday’s heartbreaking 30 percent price drop that saw it lose nearly a quarter of its price after reaching an all-time high last Monday. The 30 percent plunge that occurred in less than 24 hours does not leave a burning hole in anyone’s pocket especially if you have been stocking bitcoin for a long time – however, it is quite disappointing for bitcoin enthusiasts who have been rallying behind mainstream acceptance and real-world use of the decentralized digital currency.

As such, a number of high profile members of the cryptocurrency old guard have started to bail out of with some like Emil Oldenburg opting for spin-off bitcoin cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash which is considered to be better for payment processing, unlike its rigid older counterpart. Other members like Litecoin founder Charlie Lee have been selling rival tokens as a means to supposedly steer away from conflicts of interest in the aggressively partisan crypto market.

Former Fortress Investment Group LLC and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. macro trader Michael Novogratz has shelved plans to launch a cryptocurrency hedge fund for fear of bitcoin extending its plunge to $8,000. Novogratz last week predicted that bitcoin would clock $40,000 in just a few months but his confidence has since diminished due to prevailing market conditions that have compelled him and company to re-evaluate their moves.

Bitcoin plunged to $10,776 before it recovered to $13,480 in New York – the last time it traded below $10,000 was in at the beginning of December after which it went on to double its price in preceding weeks up until the recent disastrous drop. The drop is a trying moment not just for bitcoin but also for the underlying blockchain technology that supports it. Even Coinbase which is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges halted operations temporarily due to a significant jump of over 30 percent in the volume bitcoin transactions. Consequently, there were tremendous delays in processing wire transfers and verification of new customers in the past week.

The sharks are beginning to circle here, and the futures markets may give them a venue to strike. Bitcoin’s been heavily driven by retail investors, but there’ll be some aggressive funds looking for the right opportunity to hammer this thing lower. – Ross Norman, Sharps Pixley Ltd. CEO.

Bitcoin Will Hit $300,000 – $400,000 Says Research Analyst

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Ronnie Moas, the independent research analyst who in June predicted with a surprising degree of accuracy the surge in the price of bitcoin now has a new prediction for the decentralized digital currency. He believes that what the world of cryptocurrency has witnessed so far is just the beginning of bitcoin’s controversial journey that has a new end-game of about $300,000 to $400,000. Moas’ prediction in the summer stated that bitcoin would surpass $5,000 mark before the end of the year – which now seems to have been a very conservative prediction as the cryptocurrency soars towards the $20,000 mark. At the time, though, his predictions were considered to be wildly optimistic.

Moas, who is also the founder of Standpoint Research is betting his predictions on the hard limit on supply that will drive the demand for bitcoin to much higher than it is right now.

“I don’t know how much gold there is in the ground, but I know how much bitcoin there is, and in two years there will be 30 million people in the world trying to get their hands on a few million bitcoins,” he said in an interview with CNBC’s The Rundown. “This mind-boggling supply and demand imbalance is what is going to drive the price higher.”

“The end-game on bitcoin is that it will hit $300,000 to $400,000 in my opinion, and it will be the most valuable currency in the world.”

However, Moas’ aggressively bullish call does not go down well with other analysts who believe that it is only a matter of time before the bitcoin bubble bursts. Many believe that it is not only risky but also lacks the strong fundamental drivers to make it sustainable in the long run. Still, Moas is quite convinced that his predictions are rather conservative just like his prediction in the summer.

“I look at bitcoin the same way I look at Amazon,” he said. “The way to play Amazon for the last 15 years was to buy it, hold it, and add on the dips. That’s exactly the way I think people should be playing bitcoin.”

Charlie Lee’s Thoughts on the Future of Bitcoin and Litecoin

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While nearly everyone has been glued to the Bitcoin price charts as it draws closer to the $20,000 mark after the launch of CBOE futures last Sunday, litecoin, which is considered to be the silver to bitcoin’s gold has not been left behind. The budding cryptocurrency just recently surpassed the $100 mark and with its current momentum, the price should continue rising despite warnings by its creator, Charlie Lee.

The warning that he wrote on twitter apparently came as a response to the near 300 percent rise of litecoin’s price in a little over 48 hours. It read: “Sorry to the spoil the party, but I need to reign in the excitement a bit… Buying LTC is extremely risky. I expect us to have a multi-year bear market like the one we just had where LTC dropped 90% in value ($48 to $4). So if you can’t handle LTC dropping to $20, don’t buy!”

Litecoin is now the fifth-largest cryptocurrency with over $15 billion worth of market capitalization having rallied nearly 8,000 percent this year. While this should come as no surprise especially considering the price trends of other decentralized digital currencies, more so bitcoin, Charlie Lee is really surprised by its growth this year. In a phone interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, Lee pointed out that the frantic growth in the prices of various cryptocurrencies was an impeding factor to the wider adoption as well as mainstream acceptance since most cryptocurrency users are using them as speculative assets instead of the real-world transactions they were intended for. Due to this, he believes that it will be five more years before people finally start to use bitcoin and litecoin as a currency to make real-world transactions.

“Bitcoin is very volatile, and litecoin is even more volatile that bitcoin,” he said. “I just want to warn people that they should invest responsibly. Don’t spend all of your life savings to buy a cryptocurrency in case it drops 80 percent.”

With cryptocurrencies gaining more popularity by the day, the buzz has attracted a lot of scrutiny and a fair share of criticism from policymakers with a considerable number of them having huge doubts about the overall appeal of decentralized digital currencies as mediums of exchange and stores of value. In fact, some others have openly dismissed the need for investing in bitcoin and have warned investors not to do so either. Unlike many cryptocurrency purists who have expressed their concern over government interference, Lee has been quite welcoming to the prospects of more regulation for cryptocurrencies – and this might compel the doubtful lot to change their minds and be a little optimistic about cryptocurrency.

“I think increased regulation will help to reduce the volatility of the coin. A lot of the recent gains have had a lot to do with countries like (South) Korea and Japan really getting into the cryptocurrency space,” Lee pointed out.

“Ever since China banned the bitcoin exchanges, (South) Korea has really taken up the mantle. There is a lot of frenzy in (South) Korea right now and I think that’s driving up the price.”

Futures Officially Launch as Bitcoin Price Reaches New Highs

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Bitcoin has indeed come a long way and it is now a step closer to legitimization with the recent launch of a product that allows investors to take bets on the cryptocurrency’s price in the future. This new contract on the Chicago Board Options Exchange was just in time for bitcoin’s 10% jump which was responsible for igniting fresh speculations that it was just a bubble especially after the prior 40% climb in price. The new Chicago futures trading indicates great optimism on the side of traders that bitcoin will trade at even higher prices come January.

When the futures exchange debuted on Sunday, bitcoin futures exploded thus forcing the Chicago Board Options Exchange to halt operations for a little while so that the market would cool down. Still, bitcoin which is the underlying asset, in this case, had a price bump of about 26%. It began at $15,460 before midnight on Sunday (London time) then surged forward to reach a record high $18,700 after which it had a slight relapse to $17,800. The price volatility exhibited within such a short period of time was responsible for a number of bumps including the halting of trading activities twice.

CBOE also explained that website was being strained by the stupendous amount of traffic in a tweet that read:

“Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to https://t.co/jb3O722hoo may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable. All trading systems are operating normally.”

Bitcoin is becoming more mainstream and the launch of this contract is just the beginning of what is expected to be a very smooth ride into the next year and beyond. CBOE has since stabilized and the exchange currently lists three bitcoin features that will each expire in the first three months of 2018. The final settlement value of all the three contracts will then be determined by bitcoin’s price on exchange Gemini. As it stands, the introduction of bitcoin futures is already curving up an upward trend for bitcoin’s price and now with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) planning to launch bitcoin futures of its own on the 18th of December, we can expect the price of bitcoin to surpass the $20,000 mark very soon.

Bitcoin Futures Trading Takes Crypto to Mainstream Finance

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Today’s intersection of digital money and traditional finance being held at LaSalle Street in Chicago is set to be a game changer being that it will be the first major U.S. exchange that offers a Bitcoin-related product. Bitcoin is considered to be a wildly fluctuating currency but the large demand from individual investors has driven the cryptocurrency to rise by more than 1,500 percent in 2017 – in the past two weeks alone, its value has shot up by about 85 percent. These type of gains are powerful investor magnets even though they are the core reason behind the division between central banks from various parts of the world and Wall Street executives.

CME Group Inc., another Chicago-based exchange, and Cboe Global Market Inc. are offering futures that are anticipated to allow for great inflows of institutional money while at the same time easing the process of betting on Bitcoin’s decline. According to Galaxy Investment Partners CEO, Mike Novogratz, trading will most likely start slowly – the company is currently raising a cryptocurrency hedge fund whose target is $500 million.

Novogratz further added that, “If people have expectations that it’s going to have huge liquidity on day one, they’re just wrong. It’s going to take a while to build liquidity. People need to go through at least one cycle to figure out how it settles.”

The derivatives trading that the world is now witnessing is a result of Bitcoins record-breaking scores this year that were fueled by the high price gains it exhibited as well as its rogue anti-establishment endeavor to become free from government or institutional control. Derivative contracts are expected to propel Bitcoin further into the regulators’ domains, as well as the realms of institutional investors and banks.

“Derivatives should have the effect of bringing a deeper liquidity to the market which should reduce volatility,” said chief investment officer and co-founder of Monaco-based Altana Digital Currency Fund, Alistair Milne. “As the whole cryptocurrency economy gets bigger the volatility should reduce.”

Over $60 Million Emptied from NiceHash Wallet by Hackers

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Cryptocurrency mining marketplace NiceHash on Wednesday was hacked and its wallet emptied of over $62 million worth of Bitcoins (4,449 BTC). In a statement posted earlier today, NiceHAsh officially halted operations and is currently carrying out investigations into how the security breach occurred. In the statement, the company said:

“Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving Nicehash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours. Importantly, our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken. Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days. In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency.”

NiceHash further added that other than the obvious probe into their own employees and internal investigations, they had gone ahead to employ the expertise of “relevant authorities and law enforcement agencies” to assist in rectifying the situation as soon as possible. NiceHash also advised its users to change all their passwords with immediate effect since they are still unsure about what exactly the hackers obtained from the hack other than just the huge loot of Bitcoins.

NiceHash which was launched in 2014 allows its users to trade and sell hash power via its online marketplace by matching people with spare computing power with Bitcoin miners in need of the extra computing to create more crypto coins. Users can, therefore, reap the benefits of Bitcoin mining without having to invest fortunes in purchasing equipment or operating them. This is perhaps the biggest cloud mining hack of all time and considering how events play out after this, it is quite apparent that it will affect the cloud mining market from here on out. Already, questions are being raised about the essence of using cloud mining services instead of buying and operating machines personally, the latter being considered to be the safer option despite its cumbersome nature.

Bitcoin Rebounds from Slump to Attain New All-Time Highs

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Just a little over a week after its price went over $9,000, Bitcoin on Tuesday once again made history by climbing 3.86 percent and crossing $12,000. Trading prices from Tuesday price bump have given Bitcoin a market capitalization of nearly $203 billion which further represents a historic rise in valuation of about 1,100 percent since the beginning of 2017. All this has been amid speculation that the extensive adoption and use of futures will facilitate the legitimization of decentralized digital currencies and, ultimately, mainstream use by investors. There has been increased optimism pertaining to the distributed ledger technology, blockchain, that is a vital component of Bitcoin – even though there are still warnings about the speculative mania that revolves around Bitcoin which implies that it merely an asset bubble that will burst eventually. The lack of government backing seems to be at the heart of Bitcoin’s volatility hence the doubts.

According to hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz, “This is a bubble and there is a lot of froth. This is going to be the biggest bubble of our lifetimes.”

Novogratz is not the only one who still thinks the Bitcoin doomsday is nigh – Dennis Gartman, who is considered the biggest Bitcoin bear, still won’t bite despite Cboe Global Markets announcing that it would be venturing into Bitcoin futures trading beginning Sunday. Gartman’s major worry when it comes to Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency’s volatility, something that he says “frightens him.” This he attributes to the difficulty that comes with margining a currency that regularly shifts from 15 to 20 percent. In light of the new developments and Cboe Global Market giving Bitcoin some sense of legitimacy, Gartman still believes Bitcoin has a long way to go before he finally gives it a thumb up;

“When they begin to pay taxes on it, when it ceases to be an avenue for avoiding taxes, when it ceases to be a place where drug dealers are trading and making transactions, then I’ll be interested,” he said.