The digital currency markets have seen a host of industry-specific news over the past weeks, including events like the closure of Silk Road and announcement that Baidu would accept bitcoin for some services. While such micro events continue to play a large part in the bitcoin markets, the reaction to the agreement over the US debt limit illustrates the clear impact macroeconomic events increasingly have on bitcoin. After weeks of debate and a partial government shutdown, US legislators reached an agreement to extend the United States’ borrowing capacity. In doing so, a default by the world’s largest debtor was avoided …
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The last week has seen dramatic upwards price action in the bitcoin markets, driven by a series of macro and micro events across the globe. The fallout from Silk Road’s closure turned out to be but a blip in bitcoin’s price history, with significant gains since then. Turmoil in global financial markets and recent news of leading global websites accepting bitcoin may have bolstered enthusiasm for digital currency, but most interesting may be CNY’s definitive recent price leadership. Compared with prices before the brief Silk Road drop, bitcoin exchange rates have climbed 14% in the last two weeks. At $145/BTC …
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In mid-September, after 4.75 years in existence, the bitcoin network reached an estimated hash rate of 1 petahash per second. Remarkably, the second petahash took just one more month, pushing network speed over 2 PH/s this past weekend, or 80x the speed on January 1 of this year. This growth is primarily attributable to new ASIC bitcoin miners from KnCMiner and BTCGarden recently being added to the network, and is a trend that is not expected to stop any time soon. KnC was the first manufacturer to demonstrate a 28nm ASIC bitcoin miner on September 30 and started shipping to …
Read More →CoinLab responded last week to the ongoing lawsuit with Mt. Gox. Among other points, the filing asserts that Mt. Gox was in breach of contract by failing to provide necessary customer information, making it impossible for CoinLab to comply with regulations. We were first made aware of the latest filing here. Case Background In May of this year, CoinLab filed a $75M lawsuit against Mt. Gox for failure to turn over all North American bitcoin exchange operations as obligated per an agreement dated November 2012. In the same suit, CoinLab asserted that Mt. Gox was also in breach of the …
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Oct 11, 2013
Posted
Businesses, News, Regulatory
Tagged Canada, legal, light, transaction
Comments 4
Discussions of a possible US default have dominated the news cycle for the past few weeks. This is now the second time in as many years that debates over the debt ceiling have pushed the boundaries of the US government’s borrowing infrastructure. Having seen a similar scenario unfold in 2011, reactions from financial markets this time around may be foreseeable. Incidentally, this scenario may also provide a valuable opportunity to understand bitcoin’s developing role in the macroeconomic landscape. In Familiar Territory The current political disputes in Washington have led to a series of escalating outcomes. As the result of a …
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Silk Road, the online drug bazaar that has eluded authorities and been ingrained in the bitcoin narrative for years, was shut down yesterday. Ross Ulbricht was named in the court documents outlining Silk Road’s activities, as were a number of key data points that offer insights into the impact the world’s most infamous retail website has had on bitcoin. Ulbricht was caught as a result of human error and excessive risks related to physical delivery of false identification being delivered to his home address in San Francisco from Canada. After tracking the package, authorities found their way to Ulbricht and …
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Publishing has evolved drastically over the past two decades, proving to be one of the industries most disrupted by the advent and proliferation of the internet. Ever-lower barriers to entry for new participants have led to more competition for publishers, as well as more noise for consumers. The result has been a broad decline in publishing revenue and a user experience dominated by increasingly invasive advertising. Bitcoin, with it’s unique applicability for micropayments, may eventually be able to conquer this problem. An Old Model Disintegrates Historically, revenue generation for publications was straightforward. Publishers would sell individual copies or subscriptions to …
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Sep 25, 2013
Posted
Businesses, News
Tagged New York Times, payment, price, Wall Street Journal
Comments 4
BTC Trading Corp (BTC-TC) announced that it will close all trading by October 7, two weeks from today. BTC-TC is one of the largest bitcoin securities exchanges, responsible for 101,000 BTC ($12M) in deposited securities and 2,900 BTC ($350K) in daily volume. The company’s notice cited “recent changes in the virtual currency regulatory environment” as the reason for shuttering operations. Also closing is LTC-Global, a litecoin-denominated securities exchange also run by Ethan Burnside, the same operator as BTC-TC. Closing Process All trading was temporarily halted and order books were cleared after the announcement was made at 5am EST. After trade …
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Sep 23, 2013
Posted
Businesses, Featured, News, Trading
Tagged Active Mining, GLBSE, LTC, Regulatory Pressure, SEC, trading, volume
Comments 9
Argentina’s currency troubles have been well documented for years. With inflation between 10 and 11% per year for most of the past decade, Argentinians have actively looked to subvert the country’s strict capital controls and obtain alternative stores of value. Historically, that has meant underground dealing in USD and EUR, but more recently has led to interest in the largely-unregulated world of bitcoin. BitPagos, a Latin American payment processing company in the latest class of the Boost.vc Accelerator, is capitalizing on that interest by adding bitcoin to their processing options. Argentinian interest in bitcoin is a natural evolution for much …
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Gliph, a secure messaging application with bitcoin integration, announced today that they recently secured $200,000 in funding, led by Tim Draper. Gliph is one of seven companies with a heavy focus on bitcoin in the latest Boost.vc Accelerator class. Boost’s Demo Day is today, offering companies from the program an opportunity to present to an audience of investors and press. Gliph began in early 2012 as an encrypted messaging app, focused on securing communications across iPhone, Android and web users, protecting all messages with SSL and/or AES-256 encryption. The service also offers the ability to reveal only as much personal …
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Sep 19, 2013
Posted
Businesses, News, Security, Wallets
Tagged AES, Coinbase, Demo Day, SSL, transaction, wallet
Comments 2