IMF head Christine Lagarde said “it may not be wise to dismiss virtual currencies” like bitcoin and ethereum at bank of england conference.”=”
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Category: bitcoin
The state of Illinois is testing a new way for people to prove their identities, albeit without the need to request their birth certificates and wait weeks for it to arrive in the mail. The state aims to give citizens more control of their data, as well as provide solace in knowing it’s more secure than ever.
To accomplish this task, the state is turning to the same blockchain technology that companies like Bitcoin and Ethereum utilize for their own networks. In August, the Illinois Blockchain Initiative — a collaboration launched by the state to explore blockchain and distributed ledger technology — announced it’s partnering with self-sovereign identity solutions firm Evernym to create an online ledger that’s only accessible to the owner of the ID and any other individuals they’re granted access. It’s very similar to how the technology could be used to track and share information between hospitals.
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According to a newsletter from The James Altucher Report, Amazon will soon begin accepting Bitcoin, which they will officially announce as early as October 26th during their earnings conference call.
How Reliable is the Source?
James Altucher has (co)founded more than 20 companies, authored 11 books, and has been a contributor to several major publications.
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Bitcoin was hit by a double whammy this week. On Tuesday, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan declared that Bitcoin is a fraud that will “blow up”. Then, just this morning, a Bitcoin exchange in China announced that it would shut its doors in response to verbal pressure from regulators and an uncertain regulatory environment.
Don’t ya just love it when bad news breaks on Bitcoin? I sure do! It creates a buying opportunity. After all, just look at what happened after the last five bouts of bad news: [updated Oct 2017—Click to reverse colors & enlarge]
In each case, the Bitcoin exchange rate dropped—very briefly—and then climbed higher with renewed vigor. Heck it, doubled from $2400 to $4800 in just the past month! But here’s a the real question: Does either bad news events have legs? Does it spell the end of Bitcoin adoption and enthusiasm, at least for now?
After all, if it were discovered that the math behind Bitcoin were flawed, and that anyone could create forged coins, the empire would come tumbling down. In my book, this would constitute a crisis. But what about now? Do these two damning events—and a 35% correction in the past week—constitute a long-term crisis? To answer, we must first determine if public fears over these two events are credible…
China and JP Morgan: (a) A frightened authority (b) Simple Ignorance
Like most governments, the Chinese are concerned that the growing flight to Bitcoin is impacting liquidity of their national currency. [A superb presentation by Andreas Antonopoulos—Click it, after you read this article]. They are also concerned about the large number of Bitcoin exchanges that operate outside of a tight regulatory framework. They obscure the flow of money in and out of the country and they are a clear scapegoat for tax evasion or other criminal activity. Like any agency charged with financial regulation, the Chinese seek to reign in and regulate these maverick exchanges.
It is interesting to note that the Chinese government is not discouraging Bitcoin mining or even personal savings—only the proliferation of unlicensed exchanges and quasi-anonymous users. After all, More than 50% of all mining is done in China, and it helps to balance the loss of liquidity in the national currency.
Bitcoin is experiencing increased adoption—not just as a payment mechanism—but as a new form of stored value. Is this is a bad thing for governments? Surprise! When a government loses control over its own reserve and monetary policy, it may present more of an opportunity than a threat—for both citizens and governments. Gradually, economists, treasury secretaries, reserve board governors and monetary tsars will are coming to the same conclusion. But regardless of your position on this point of debate, here is a fact that is less controversial…
When governments attempt to restrict an activity that cannot be economically monitored or enforced—or at least when they attempt to do it in a way that leaves no relief valve for hobbyists, business, commerce, research or NGOs—they ultimately fuel the activity that they set out to stifle. Ultimately, if the public cannot discern a reasonable basis for government censorship or excessive restrictions, it leads to interest, innovation, adoption and the emergence of hot new markets.
Consider, again, the graph of Bitcoin price –vs- Bad news events at the top of this page.
On each date highlighted above, there was a damning piece of information that should cause early adopters to reconsider their enthusiasm for Bitcoin. In fact, the Hearn Dump really should have ended the whole party. A core developer sold off his entire BTC savings and claimed that the experiment was a failure. He published an article with his reasons for believing that Bitcoin was dead. Likewise, the SEC decision to prohibit the creation of an exchange traded fund (the Winkelvoss ETF), it sent a clear signal that governments really didn’t consider cryptocurrencies to be an asset at all.
But the graph demonstrates that each piece of “bad news” fueled a miniature rally. That’s because Bitcoin has none of the elements of a pyramid scheme. It is not an MLM and it cannot be manufactured or controlled by any organization. Rather, it is an exercise in pure supply, demand and market recognition. It is pure adoption mechanism that leads to a two-sided network. It’s benefits multiply as more users join the party.
What about Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan? He says that Bitcoin will crash.
Bitcoin has had a rocky road these first 8 years. Major exchanges have been bankrupt or worse, enormous criminal conspiracies were among the early adopters, the SEC has prohibited the creation of an ETF based on cryptocurrency, rogue spin-off coins are driving a wedge among users, and there are serious problems related to scaling and governance. A casual observer might wonder who is in control and who can be held responsible? After all, the idea of an economic mechanism that is altered by democratic—but decentralized—factors is new and radical. How can Bitcoin evolve, adapt and grow in the absence of an authority at its heart?
This confusion arises from the newness and unfamiliarity of blockchain architecture. Skepticism is natural. Indeed, Bitcoin is guided by an authority, but it doesn’t reside at the center of the network. It resides at the edges. This is the concept behind Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-Work. Unlike a classic authority, your will matters just as much as anyone else’s. It is exceptionally democratic, self-enforcing, and resistant to gaming.
This is a difficult concept to wrap our heads around, because it is so different than we were taught and it is different than we have experienced for centuries. For this reason, Jamie Dimon’s statement that there is nothing behind Bitcoin presents a buy opportunity for individuals who were late to the table. Jamie may not yet understand intrinsic value, but we can educate ourselves. Bitcoin has more standing behind it than the US dollar.
… But don’t take this as investment advice. Bitcoin should not be thought of as an investment. It is the future of money. Speculation (both day trading and long term buy-&-hold) act to retard the eventual adoption of Bitcoin as a serious monetary instrument. Although I have Bitcoin, I do not encourage people to think of it as an investment. It is more important that it be used for ordinary business and commerce:
- Products and services
- Loans and debt settlement
- Stored value transfer (gift cads & prepaid services)
- Escrow
- Quotations and price guarantees
- Interbank exchange
- Smart contracts
- Liens and letters of credit
When the fraction of Bitcoin transactions servicing these consumer and business activities exceeds the fraction driven by savers and speculators, the dominos will begin to fall rapidly.
Articles about Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan…
- Jamie Dimon: Bitcoin Is A Fraud
- John McAfee: I challenge Jamie Dimon’s bitcoin skepticism
- Crypto Is Here to Stay (Whatever Jamie Dimon Might Say)
Can we draw a conclusion? Certainly, we can. And, we can toss in a prediction. It’s not even a high risk prediction. The recent pullback has no fundamental basis. No legs at all. The two “bad news” are not just a 
red herring—they present a buying opportunity. If I were allowed to give investor advice (I am not; and I don’t), I would express my opinion with more verve and obvious conviction.
Caveat Emptor (Everything comes with a disclaimer)…
I am a Bitcoin educator, proponent, early adopter and blockchain consultant. But here is the contradiction: Although I am also a Bitcoin investor, I discourage others from treating Bitcoin as an investment. Use it, but please don’t save it!
Why do I discourage others from investing in Bitcoin?
It’s not that I don’t believe that Bitcoin will increase in exchange value. It will rise spectacularly, as adoption grows. But Bitcoin will not become ubiquitous and trusted until the majority of coins are recycled into the market for payments, settlement, loans, interbank transfers, escrow, contract settlement, etc. That is, its use for business and commerce must exceed the fraction of trades that are driven by savers and speculators. Until this happens, Bitcoin will remain volatile. It will be the subject of suspicion. It won’t be used for large settlements and it won’t become the money itself.
Speculation acts against fluidity. It won’t block the eventual acceptance of Bitcoin as a global currency. Hoarding is not a deal stopper. But It retards momentum and delays the inevitable.
Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, produces The Bitcoin Event, edits A Wild Duck and is moderator of LinkedIN Bitcoin P2P, the largest discussion group of it’s kind. He is keynote at this year’s Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg and sits on the New Money Systems board at Lifeboat Foundation. Use the contact form to inquire about a live presentation or consulting engagement.
On August 1 2017, the value of a Bitcoin was at $2,750 US dollars. Today, just over one month later, it is poised to leap past $5,000 per unit. With this gain, many people are asking if Bitcoin has any genuine, inherent value. Is it a pyramid scheme? —Or is it simply a house of cards ready to collapse when the wind picks up?
In a past article, I explained that Bitcoin fundamentals ought to place its value in the vicinity of $10,000.* (At the time, it was less than $450, and had even fallen to $220 in the following year).
For many consumers viewing the rising interest in Bitcoin from the stands, there is great mystery surrounding the underlying value. What, if anything, stands behind it? This is a question with a clear and concise answer. In fact, it has a very definitive and believable answer—but it is easiest to understand with just a little bit of historical perspective.
At one time, G7 fiat currencies were backed by a reserve of physical Gold or the pooling or cross-ownership of other currencies that are backed by gold. That ended in 1971 when the Bretton Woods agreement was dissolved by president Richard Nixon in Ithaca NY.
Today, US currency is backed by “The good faith and credit of the American worker” (This is the government explanation of intrinsic value). But in truth its future value is loosely tied to one simple question: Does the typical vendor or consumer (for example, someone accepting a $20 bill in exchange for a movie ticket or 2 large pizzas) expect it to buy these same things in the next few months?
A considerable number of speculative components contribute to the answer. For example:
- What About the Big Picture? DEBT! Everyone knows that a house built on debt cannot thrive forever without a continuous stream of productivity and income. Is the money being printed without a commensurate added value to the nation’s capacity to repay debts?
- Public Trust: Good faith goes beyond debt. Can consumers and creditors be certain that a change of government won’t cause rampant inflation or a willful failure to retire future debt? Can they be assured that their fellow workers will continue to produce and export manufactured goods in ever increasing quantity?
- Guns & Tanks: Citizens are compelled by law to pay their taxes in official state currency. Even for those who attempt to fly under the wire or use alternate currencies during the tax year, this ultimately forces fiat currency to be recognized and honored.
- Geopolitical Stability: We have been a debtor nation for decades and we have significant political and economic disputes with our largest creditors (China and nations of oil-rich gulf states). What would be the effect of them (a) moving away from the dollar as their reserve currency, or (b) investing the trillions of dollars they have earned in some other country?
This list is not exhaustive, but all constituents boil down to two fundamental concepts: Supply-and-demand and How long will demand last?
The dollar is an invention of a transient government. Even with a long history and complex banking framework, it is no more real than Bitcoin. Supply and demand for any commodity is based on popular recognition, anti-counterfeit features, innate desire and public goodwill. The real question is what contributes to the desire to own or spend Bitcoin?
The answer is that Bitcoin is backed by something far more reliable and trustworthy than the transient whim of elected legislators. It is backed by something that carries more weight than the US government. What could possibly guaranty the value of a Bitcoin? After all, it does not convey ownership in gold, and it has no redemption guarantee. There is no engraving of Caesar on the coin. (In fact, there is no coin at all!)…
Answer: Bitcoin is backed by math, a firm cap, a completely transparent set of books, and the critical mass of a two-sided network. Although it can be taxed (like any asset), it can be owned and transferred with impunity and without recourse. These may not seem like critical components of intrinsic value, but they are. In fact, they define intrinsic value in the modern era.
Related:
- What gives Bitcoin value?
- * Calculate Bitcoin value (based on fundamentals)
- What fraction of Bitcoin value is driven by speculators?
- Can cash have value if it isn’t real? «—— My very first Bitcoin article
Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, produces The Bitcoin Event, edits A Wild Duck and is keynote at this year’s Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg.
Hyder Jaffrey, head of strategic funding and fintech innovation at UBS, stated: “We have been in discussions with central banks and regulators and we will continue that over the next 12 months with the aim of a limited ‘go live’ at the back end of 2018.”
‘Utility settlement coin’ aims to launch next year for blockchain settlements.
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Set on Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island, the third annual Blockchain Summit, hosted by BitFury, a leading full service Blockchain company, and Bill Tai, a venture investor and technologist, has come to a close. This event was an intimate, if perfectly balanced, gathering of technology, policy, investment and business leaders from around the world and across sectors. Topics ranged from the public policy implications of what is being heralded as a foundational technology, to new emerging business models that can ride on the very rails that enabled the global bonanza of digital currencies like Bitcoin. A key question that underpinned the Summit is if Blockchain could not have existed without the Internet, what could not exist without Blockchain?
Blockchain technology can undoubtedly change industries, especially those that labor under often byzantine, opaque and friction-laden business models. While many of the early pioneers are focusing on finance and insurance, the opportunities for this radical technology may very well reorder society as we know it. The remarkable case of Estonia, for example, shows a country reinventing itself into a future-proof digital state, where citizen services are rendered nearly instantaneously and to people all over the world. Similarly, promising work inspired by the famed Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, on improving land registries is being carried out by BitFury in a host of countries. With land and property being the two largest assets people will own — and the principal vehicle of value creation and wealth transfer — an unalterable, secure and transparent registration process should give the world comfort and elected leaders longevity.
What drives this unique technology is the power of distributed singularity, from which Blockchain’s identity pioneers like Dr. Mariana Dahan, who launched the World Identity Network on Necker Island, and Vinny Lingham of Civic, draw their inspiration. Blockchain operates on the basis of a distributed ledger (or database) system, inexorably marching forward recording and time-stamping transactions or records. While some may herald Bitcoin as Blockchain’s “killer app,” it is easy to maintain that the killer app is not the digital currencies that ride on Blockchain’s rails, but rather the rail system altogether. Two trains can ride on rails. But a high-speed maglev train is a decidedly faster mode of transport than a steam engine. Just as the maglev makes little or no contact with the rails enabling low-friction transport, the Blockchain can greatly reduce the friction in how the world transfers and records value.
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With Russia looking to cure its economy of a hydrocarbon addiction, a consortium of the country’s biggest banks is proposing that it explores a different kind of gas for the answer.
The lenders, including Sberbank PJSC and VTB Group, aren’t developing gas of the natural variety. It’s also the name of a virtual unit based on the blockchain of ethereum, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency after bitcoin. The banks are hoping that by adopting the technology they will make payments safer and faster, while thrusting Russia to the forefront of a trend that’s transforming the financial industry.
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Yesterday was D-Day in the Bitcoin world: On Tuesday, Aug 1st 2017, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) forked off of Bitcoin (BTC). For anyone with control over their wallet and private keys, they now have an equal amount of BTC and BCH.
I have a Bitcoin wallet. Yet, I don’t have any new Bitcoin Cash—and I have no one to blame but myself. Will I ever get the BCH associated with my pre-fork coins? 
I think that it is likely, though certainly not assured. If not, it will still be my fault. After all, I had fair warning from the company that I trust as custodian of my assets.
A Cryptocurrency Mantra:
“Woe be the person who trusts decentralized cash to a custodian”
I trust Coinbase for good reason. I left my BTC in my Coinbase wallet and vault throughout the fork. Let me tell you how I view the risks of failing to remove my coins before August 1…
- Coinbase was clear in warning that BTC withdrawals would be frozen before and after a fork. No problem…I had no immediate need to access my coins.
2. Coinbase warned 
they had no plan to support BCH—not even for withdrawal after a fork.
I accepted this 2nd warning, even though their reasoning and motives were terribly weak. But, today, I feel very sore. I need a morning after pill! Bitcoin still trades at the level of the past week—about $2700 US/BTC. But my non-existent BCH holdings have significant value! It was briefly as high as $750 per coin, and is now trading at $475. This means that even if I have no desire to save or spend the new coin, I no longer have the option to liquidate my forked asset. I lost a slam-dunk opportunity to capture 17½%.
We’re not talking about a theoretical gain or a gain that assumes liquidation at a momentary spike. We’re talking about right now—a missed opportunity to pocket thousands of dollars!
Am I angry? Not really. I am disappointed at my lack of initiative. I have only myself to blame. For the record—I don’t believe that I have a reasonable legal claim against Coinbase. After all, they warned me! But, 
I believe that they will give me my forked coins—eventually. They have already acknowledged to conspiracy theorists that they will not keep the forked BCH, in the event that they create a conversion mechanism. In that case, they will allow withdrawal by the owner of the associated BTC. Now that they see dramatic fractional value, how could they not complete the fork?!
Where Does This Leave Me?
I’m not poorer today than I was yesterday, and I still have the same value in Bitcoin. But, I missed a zero-risk opportunity to gain 17½% overnight. It was staring me in the face and I passed it up. At least I draw comfort in my confidence that Coinbase will complete the fork. Please, Coinbase: Complete the fork!
Philip Raymond owns Bitcoin, but has no Bitcoin Cash. He co-chairs CRYPSA and Bitcoin Event, is columnist & board member at Lifeboat Foundation, editor at WildDuck, and keynote speaker at Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg. He is a leading author at Quora.