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1,308,740,160 | 2011-06-22 10:56:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [0, 962, 1179, 1222]} | {"Bitcoin": [37]} | Compromised account leads to massive Bitcoin sell off, EFF reconsiders use of currency | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/2011-06-22-compromised-account-leads-to-massive-bitcoin-sell-off-eff-recon.html | Engadget | https://www.engadget.com/ | Bitcoin, for those not aware, is a completely digital currency -- one where exchanges between individuals are largely anonymous and secured through cryptography, and one that has seen its hype-meter go off the charts in recent months. That, inevitably, has had some people waiting for a fall, and it took a big one this week. While things have since bounced back, the value of the currency on the so-called Mt. Gox exchange dropped from around $17.50 to justone centin a matter of moments during the early hours of June 20th -- a drop that's since been attributed to a compromised account. Thanks to a daily withdrawal limit, however, that apparently only resulted in $1,000 actually being stolen, and a claims process has now been set up for those affected.While not directly related to the sell off, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (orEFF) also dealt a bit of a blow to the upstart currency this week, when it announced that it would no longer be accepting Bitcoin donations. According to the organization, that's both because it doesn't "fully understand the complex legal issues involved with creating a new currency system," and because it doesn't want its acceptance of Bitcoins misconstrued as an endorsement of Bitcoin. Head on past the break for an account of the aforementioned plunge as it happened.[Thanks, Zigmar; image:Wikipedia] |
1,383,348,600 | 2013-11-01 23:30:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [0, 305]} | {} | 10 Stories From the Web to Know About This Week | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-stories-know-week-233000192.html | Entrepreneur | http://www.entrepreneur.com/ | Bitcoin launches ATMS, quantifying innovation, Marissa Mayer's no telecommuting policy gets vindicated, Latinas take over, marketers can’t decide if Facebook ads work, Steve Blank gets fired, Twitpics come out… This week's notable news and tantalizing tidbits for entrepreneurs:
1.Say 'Hello' to Robocoin:Bitcoin recently took a giant leap into the realm of legitimacy and real-world application with the debut of its first ATM. Dubbed Robocoin, the machine allows currency to be exchanged for bitcoins, and vice-versa. (Wired)
2.The chemistry of success:Graduate student Kiriti Rambhatla offers a new way to quantify innovation within a company. Don't worry, there's not much math. (Forbes)
3.Yahoo gets vindicated:The roar from critics has been quashed by data, as CEO Marissa Mayer's unpopular no telecommuting policy proves successful. Productivity and employee engagement are up. (Fast Company)
Related:Say What? Yahoo's Marissa Mayer Buys a Funeral Home
4.The right way to outsource:Outsourcing is a great way to keep startup costs down. Here is a smart guide to finding the right people for your small-business needs. (The Guardian)
5.Steve Blank's first job in Silicon Valley:Steve Blank, father of the Lean Startup movement, recalls his first job in Silicon Valley and what he learned getting fired and rehired in the same day. (LinkedIn Today)
6.Google's Spotlight Stories:Teaming up with Motorola, Google is creating a new interactive program that puts users at the center of an animated featurette… literally at the center of a 360 degree virtual reality movie, viewable with a Moto X smartphone. (Wired)
7.Does Facebook advertising work?Professional marketers are torn when it comes to agreeing on the effectiveness and value of Facebook advertising. Two recent third-party surveys convey this conundrum with contradicting data. (Businessweek)
Related:Is Facebook Really a Failure to Marketers?
8.Twitpics see the light:Twitter updated its website and mobile apps to incorporate photo and video previews in tweet streams. Coming at a critical time before an expected $1.3 billion IPO next week, the micro-blogging giant is surely looking to create new revenue streams and lure advertisers. (SF Gate)
9.Latina-owned businesses explode:In the last decade, Hispanic Americans have been starting and growing new businesses at twice the rate of the general population, according to a new study by researcher Geoscape and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. A large part of that growth has come from Latinas. (Huffington Post)
Related:7 Tips for Women Who Want to Own a Franchise
10.Scammers cometh:Randy Shain, founder ofBackTrack Reportsand investigative due diligence expert, predicts that with the SEC’s decision to allow the solicitation of capital from unaccredited investors will come a new wave of scammers. (Venture Beat) |
1,383,492,766 | 2013-11-03 15:32:46+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [258, 477, 558, 638, 846, 986, 1159, 1398, 1417, 1606, 1994, 2070, 2322, 2507, 2537, 2630, 2823, 2874, 3033, 3187, 3256, 3703, 3900, 4280, 4368, 4496, 4779, 4964, 5245, 5443, 5528, 5720, 6374, 6685, 6715, 7500, 7674, 7802, 8129, 8361]} | {"Bitcoin": [35]} | Chip designers see dollar signs in Bitcoin miners | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chip-designers-see-dollar-signs-153246355.html | Reuters | http://www.reuters.com/ | By Noel Randewich SUNNYVALE, California (Reuters) - Tucked away in an air conditioned data center in Silicon Valley is a hodgepodge of black boxes, circuit boards and cooling fans owned by 27-year-old Aaron Jackson-Wilde, a modern-day prospector looking for Bitcoins. Since discovering the digital currency a few months ago, Jackson-Wilde has paid about $2,000 for his "rigs," which are powered by specialized computer chips. They are designed to help operate and maintain the Bitcoin network - and, in return, generate a small reward in a process known as "Bitcoin mining." A form of electronic money independent of traditional banking, Bitcoins started circulating in 2009 and have since become the most prominent of several fledgling digital currencies. While they quickly gained a reputation for facilitating drug deals and money laundering, Bitcoins have of late garnered attention from investors, such as venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The volume of transactions using Bitcoins today remains miniscule, but enthusiasts believe the peer-to-peer currency will play a major role in e-commerce and could eventually become as ubiquitous as email. Bitcoin mining is based on a unique feature of the digital currency. Unlike traditional currencies, where a central bank decides how much money to print based on goals like controlling inflation, no central authority governs the supply of Bitcoins. Instead, Bitcoin transactions are tracked by a network of computers that solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions and prevent counterfeit. The system automatically generates new Bitcoins as the math problems are solved and rewards them to the computer operators. In a key twist that keeps inflation in check, the difficulty of the cryptographic math that leads to newly minted coins grows as more computers join the network. That has led some technology professionals to target a new market in souped-up computers and specialized chips aimed at the growing ranks of Bitcoin "miners." Story continues Consider Ravi Iyengar, who first heard of Bitcoins about six months ago. Since then he has quit his job as a senior chip architect at Samsung Electronics and raised $1.5 million to launch CoinTerra. He says he has already pre-sold more than $5 million worth of the hardware he has designed for Bitcoin mining. "I've been in arms races throughout my career - AMD, ARM, Intel," said Iyengar, referring to prominent semiconductor companies, "but none of them match the intensity of Bitcoin mining. Each month in Bitcoin mining is like a year." PERISHABLE SILICON Little is known about exactly who started Bitcoin, but the concept was introduced in a 2008 paper written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, Satoshi Nakamoto has become sort of a patron saint among advocates pushing for Bitcoins as an alternative to national currencies. Bitcoin is not backed by physical assets, is not run by any person or group, and its value depends on people's confidence in the currency. The dollar price of Bitcoins has spiked over the past year as more people became aware of the currency and speculators jumped into the market, which remains highly volatile. Bitcoin recently broke $200, compared to $12 a year ago. The goal of Bitcoin miners is to pull in more than what they spend on their rigs - some cost over $20,000 - and the electricity they need to keep the machines running 24 hours a day. That is no easy feat. In the past three months, miners added so much gear with drastically improved chips that processing power on the network jumped from 289 terahashes per second to more than 4,000 terahashes per second, according to The Genesis Block, a blog that collects Bitcoin data. In reaction, the network drove up the difficulty of verifying each cryptographic block of transaction data, making it even harder to break even on investments in costly mining gear. "Bitcoin makes silicon perishable," said Andreas Antonopoulos, a digital currency entrepreneur in San Francisco. "Your mining rig rots away in front of your eyes every day you have it." It has become so hard to make a profit that comparisons to the 19th century California gold rush, when money was often made selling shovels to naive prospectors, have become a running joke among Bitcoin miners. "It's the guys who sell the equipment who are making the money, not the Bitcoin miners," said Jackson-Wilde, a manager at a company that makes motorcycle batteries. CoinTerra believes spending on new Bitcoin mining chips could easily hit $100 million a year for the next three years, assuming no change in prices. While that is peanuts for large semiconductor companies like Intel Corp and Qualcomm Inc, it is a lucrative market for a handful of small developers. About 11.9 million Bitcoins, worth $2.4 billion at recent prices, have been minted since the currency began circulating. Based on recent activity, the network is on track to create around 1.4 million new Bitcoins annually over the next three years, the equivalent of more than $280 million a year at recent exchange rates. Reflecting growing competition, Jackson-Wilde says his gear - which features model names like Erupter, Jalapeno and Spartan - now pulls in a tiny fraction of the Bitcoins it used to, but he expects another $10,000 worth of next-generation equipment to put him in the black. Despite the expenditures, he considers himself a hobbyist committed to supporting the Bitcoin network rather than a serious digital-currency investor. "Buying and selling Bitcoins is enticing, but it's not as enticing as being part of it and actually having hardware," he said. HOBBY STATE Mining with a simple laptop PC was easy back in 2009, when the fledgling Bitcoin network was a fraction of its current size. But within a year, hobbyists found that graphics chips, often referred to as GPUs and widely used by PC gamers, could provide a major boost in mining output. Miners cobbled together dozens of graphics chips in their garages and basements, surrounded by fans to keep the electronics from overheating. Then in 2010, entrepreneurs caught wind. Jeff Ownby and a handful of colleagues had just formed Butterfly Labs with the goal of using off-the-shelf programmable chips, known as FPGAs, to help banks run complex financial risk simulations. "As we were starting down the road planning this, we read about Bitcoin and said 'Wow, this is exactly what we're trying to do here,'" Ownby said. "It was pretty much in a hobby state, so we thought this might be something." Butterfly Labs and other startups optimized FPGAs, which are more typically used in factories and telecommunications gear, to work efficiently on the Bitcoin network. In 2012, the Bitcoin arms race escalated again when Butterfly Labs and rivals, all with little or no semiconductor engineering experience, started designing chips from the ground up. Custom chips, known as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), are normally made by companies focused on high-volume products like televisions - not startups making small batches of digital mining devices. "They're the Wild West," said John Cheng, head of California based-Custom Silicon Solutions, which helped Butterfly Labs design and manufacture its ASIC. "There's a certain rhythm you're used to in the chip business. It's usually two or three years before your ramp, but these guys wanted to ramp in six months." Butterfly Labs said on Thursday it recently took a downpayment for new mining gear in Bitcoins equivalent to $1 million, the largest-ever transaction in the digital currency. It identified the customer as HashTrade, a company selling contracts for cloud-based Bitcoin mining run in data centers. David Johnston, executive director of BitAngels, an investment group, says consolidation in Bitcoin mining is well underway. "Mining has been going through these different generations and going up a learning curve, from amateurs running CPUs and GPUs to new professionally funded companies with experienced chip designers taking it to the state of the art," Johnston said. Still, there remain plenty of oddities in the Bitcoin mining business. Johnston cited ASICMiner, which both sells mining rigs and runs its own mining operations, as one of the largest and most respected operators. The company has even sold stock to online investors who paid in Bitcoins. ASICMiner recently had a market value equivalent to $50 million, according to data on the BitFunder online exchange. But few know where the company is located, or even who is in charge. The chief executive communicates through web forums under the pseudonym "Friedcat." (Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Tiffany Wu and Tim Dobbyn) |
1,383,493,864 | 2013-11-03 15:51:04+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [258, 477, 558, 638, 846, 986, 1159, 1398, 1417, 1606, 1994, 2070, 2322, 2507, 2537, 2630, 2823, 2874, 3033, 3187, 3256, 3703, 3900, 4280, 4368, 4496, 4779, 4964, 5245, 5443, 5528, 5720, 6374, 6685, 6715, 7500, 7674, 7802, 8129, 8361]} | {"Bitcoin": [35]} | Chip designers see dollar signs in Bitcoin miners | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chip-designers-see-dollar-signs-150217901.html | Reuters | https://www.reuters.com/ | By Noel Randewich SUNNYVALE, California (Reuters) - Tucked away in an air conditioned data centre in Silicon Valley is a hodgepodge of black boxes, circuit boards and cooling fans owned by 27-year-old Aaron Jackson-Wilde, a modern-day prospector looking for Bitcoins. Since discovering the digital currency a few months ago, Jackson-Wilde has paid about $2,000 for his "rigs," which are powered by specialized computer chips. They are designed to help operate and maintain the Bitcoin network - and, in return, generate a small reward in a process known as "Bitcoin mining." A form of electronic money independent of traditional banking, Bitcoins started circulating in 2009 and have since become the most prominent of several fledgling digital currencies. While they quickly gained a reputation for facilitating drug deals and money laundering, Bitcoins have of late garnered attention from investors, such as venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The volume of transactions using Bitcoins today remains miniscule, but enthusiasts believe the peer-to-peer currency will play a major role in e-commerce and could eventually become as ubiquitous as email. Bitcoin mining is based on a unique feature of the digital currency. Unlike traditional currencies, where a central bank decides how much money to print based on goals like controlling inflation, no central authority governs the supply of Bitcoins. Instead, Bitcoin transactions are tracked by a network of computers that solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions and prevent counterfeit. The system automatically generates new Bitcoins as the math problems are solved and rewards them to the computer operators. In a key twist that keeps inflation in check, the difficulty of the cryptographic math that leads to newly minted coins grows as more computers join the network. That has led some technology professionals to target a new market in souped-up computers and specialized chips aimed at the growing ranks of Bitcoin "miners." Story continues Consider Ravi Iyengar, who first heard of Bitcoins about six months ago. Since then he has quit his job as a senior chip architect at Samsung Electronics and raised $1.5 million to launch CoinTerra. He says he has already pre-sold more than $5 million worth of the hardware he has designed for Bitcoin mining. "I've been in arms races throughout my career - AMD, ARM, Intel," said Iyengar, referring to prominent semiconductor companies, "but none of them match the intensity of Bitcoin mining. Each month in Bitcoin mining is like a year." PERISHABLE SILICON Little is known about exactly who started Bitcoin, but the concept was introduced in a 2008 paper written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, Satoshi Nakamoto has become sort of a patron saint among advocates pushing for Bitcoins as an alternative to national currencies. Bitcoin is not backed by physical assets, is not run by any person or group, and its value depends on people's confidence in the currency. The dollar price of Bitcoins has spiked over the past year as more people became aware of the currency and speculators jumped into the market, which remains highly volatile. Bitcoin recently broke $200, compared to $12 a year ago. The goal of Bitcoin miners is to pull in more than what they spend on their rigs - some cost over $20,000 - and the electricity they need to keep the machines running 24 hours a day. That is no easy feat. In the past three months, miners added so much gear with drastically improved chips that processing power on the network jumped from 289 terahashes per second to more than 4,000 terahashes per second, according to The Genesis Block, a blog that collects Bitcoin data. In reaction, the network drove up the difficulty of verifying each cryptographic block of transaction data, making it even harder to break even on investments in costly mining gear. "Bitcoin makes silicon perishable," said Andreas Antonopoulos, a digital currency entrepreneur in San Francisco. "Your mining rig rots away in front of your eyes every day you have it." It has become so hard to make a profit that comparisons to the 19th century California gold rush, when money was often made selling shovels to naive prospectors, have become a running joke among Bitcoin miners. "It's the guys who sell the equipment who are making the money, not the Bitcoin miners," said Jackson-Wilde, a manager at a company that makes motorcycle batteries. CoinTerra believes spending on new Bitcoin mining chips could easily hit $100 million a year for the next three years, assuming no change in prices. While that is peanuts for large semiconductor companies like Intel Corp and Qualcomm Inc, it is a lucrative market for a handful of small developers. About 11.9 million Bitcoins, worth $2.4 billion at recent prices, have been minted since the currency began circulating. Based on recent activity, the network is on track to create around 1.4 million new Bitcoins annually over the next three years, the equivalent of more than $280 million a year at recent exchange rates. Reflecting growing competition, Jackson-Wilde says his gear - which features model names like Erupter, Jalapeno and Spartan - now pulls in a tiny fraction of the Bitcoins it used to, but he expects another $10,000 worth of next-generation equipment to put him in the black. Despite the expenditures, he considers himself a hobbyist committed to supporting the Bitcoin network rather than a serious digital-currency investor. "Buying and selling Bitcoins is enticing, but it's not as enticing as being part of it and actually having hardware," he said. HOBBY STATE Mining with a simple laptop PC was easy back in 2009, when the fledgling Bitcoin network was a fraction of its current size. But within a year, hobbyists found that graphics chips, often referred to as GPUs and widely used by PC gamers, could provide a major boost in mining output. Miners cobbled together dozens of graphics chips in their garages and basements, surrounded by fans to keep the electronics from overheating. Then in 2010, entrepreneurs caught wind. Jeff Ownby and a handful of colleagues had just formed Butterfly Labs with the goal of using off-the-shelf programmable chips, known as FPGAs, to help banks run complex financial risk simulations. "As we were starting down the road planning this, we read about Bitcoin and said 'Wow, this is exactly what we're trying to do here,'" Ownby said. "It was pretty much in a hobby state, so we thought this might be something." Butterfly Labs and other startups optimized FPGAs, which are more typically used in factories and telecommunications gear, to work efficiently on the Bitcoin network. In 2012, the Bitcoin arms race escalated again when Butterfly Labs and rivals, all with little or no semiconductor engineering experience, started designing chips from the ground up. Custom chips, known as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), are normally made by companies focused on high-volume products like televisions - not startups making small batches of digital mining devices. "They're the Wild West," said John Cheng, head of California based-Custom Silicon Solutions, which helped Butterfly Labs design and manufacture its ASIC. "There's a certain rhythm you're used to in the chip business. It's usually two or three years before your ramp, but these guys wanted to ramp in six months." Butterfly Labs said on Thursday it recently took a downpayment for new mining gear in Bitcoins equivalent to $1 million, the largest-ever transaction in the digital currency. It identified the customer as HashTrade, a company selling contracts for cloud-based Bitcoin mining run in data centres. David Johnston, executive director of BitAngels, an investment group, says consolidation in Bitcoin mining is well underway. "Mining has been going through these different generations and going up a learning curve, from amateurs running CPUs and GPUs to new professionally funded companies with experienced chip designers taking it to the state of the art," Johnston said. Still, there remain plenty of oddities in the Bitcoin mining business. Johnston cited ASICMiner, which both sells mining rigs and runs its own mining operations, as one of the largest and most respected operators. The company has even sold stock to online investors who paid in Bitcoins. ASICMiner recently had a market value equivalent to $50 million, according to data on the BitFunder online exchange. But few know where the company is located, or even who is in charge. The chief executive communicates through web forums under the pseudonym "Friedcat." (Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Tiffany Wu and Tim Dobbyn) |
1,383,495,589 | 2013-11-03 16:19:49+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [258, 477, 558, 638, 846, 986, 1159, 1398, 1417, 1606, 1994, 2054, 2306, 2491, 2521, 2614, 2807, 2858, 3017, 3171, 3240, 3687, 3884, 4264, 4352, 4480, 4763, 4948, 5229, 5427, 5512, 5704, 6358, 6669, 6699, 7484, 7658, 7786, 8113, 8345]} | {"Bitcoin": [35]} | Chip designers see dollar signs in Bitcoin miners | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chip-designers-see-dollar-signs-bitcoin-miners-153246474--finance.html | Reuters | https://www.reuters.com/ | By Noel Randewich SUNNYVALE, California (Reuters) - Tucked away in an air conditioned data center in Silicon Valley is a hodgepodge of black boxes, circuit boards and cooling fans owned by 27-year-old Aaron Jackson-Wilde, a modern-day prospector looking for Bitcoins. Since discovering the digital currency a few months ago, Jackson-Wilde has paid about $2,000 for his "rigs," which are powered by specialized computer chips. They are designed to help operate and maintain the Bitcoin network - and, in return, generate a small reward in a process known as "Bitcoin mining." A form of electronic money independent of traditional banking, Bitcoins started circulating in 2009 and have since become the most prominent of several fledgling digital currencies. While they quickly gained a reputation for facilitating drug deals and money laundering, Bitcoins have of late garnered attention from investors, such as venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The volume of transactions using Bitcoins today remains miniscule, but enthusiasts believe the peer-to-peer currency will play a major role in e-commerce and could eventually become as ubiquitous as email. Bitcoin mining is based on a unique feature of the digital currency. Unlike traditional currencies, where a central bank decides how much money to print based on goals like controlling inflation, no central authority governs the supply of Bitcoins. Instead, Bitcoin transactions are tracked by a network of computers that solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions and prevent counterfeit. The system automatically generates new Bitcoins as the math problems are solved and rewards them to the computer operators. In a key twist that keeps inflation in check, the difficulty of the cryptographic math that leads to newly minted coins grows as more computers join the network. That has led some technology professionals to target a new market in souped-up computers and specialized chips aimed at the growing ranks of Bitcoin "miners." Consider Ravi Iyengar, who first heard of Bitcoins about six months ago. Since then he has quit his job as a senior chip architect at Samsung Electronics and raised $1.5 million to launch CoinTerra. He says he has already pre-sold more than $5 million worth of the hardware he has designed for Bitcoin mining. "I've been in arms races throughout my career - AMD, ARM, Intel," said Iyengar, referring to prominent semiconductor companies, "but none of them match the intensity of Bitcoin mining. Each month in Bitcoin mining is like a year." PERISHABLE SILICON Little is known about exactly who started Bitcoin, but the concept was introduced in a 2008 paper written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, Satoshi Nakamoto has become sort of a patron saint among advocates pushing for Bitcoins as an alternative to national currencies. Bitcoin is not backed by physical assets, is not run by any person or group, and its value depends on people's confidence in the currency. The dollar price of Bitcoins has spiked over the past year as more people became aware of the currency and speculators jumped into the market, which remains highly volatile. Bitcoin recently broke $200, compared to $12 a year ago. The goal of Bitcoin miners is to pull in more than what they spend on their rigs - some cost over $20,000 - and the electricity they need to keep the machines running 24 hours a day. That is no easy feat. In the past three months, miners added so much gear with drastically improved chips that processing power on the network jumped from 289 terahashes per second to more than 4,000 terahashes per second, according to The Genesis Block, a blog that collects Bitcoin data. In reaction, the network drove up the difficulty of verifying each cryptographic block of transaction data, making it even harder to break even on investments in costly mining gear. "Bitcoin makes silicon perishable," said Andreas Antonopoulos, a digital currency entrepreneur in San Francisco. "Your mining rig rots away in front of your eyes every day you have it." It has become so hard to make a profit that comparisons to the 19th century California gold rush, when money was often made selling shovels to naive prospectors, have become a running joke among Bitcoin miners. "It's the guys who sell the equipment who are making the money, not the Bitcoin miners," said Jackson-Wilde, a manager at a company that makes motorcycle batteries. CoinTerra believes spending on new Bitcoin mining chips could easily hit $100 million a year for the next three years, assuming no change in prices. While that is peanuts for large semiconductor companies like Intel Corp and Qualcomm Inc, it is a lucrative market for a handful of small developers. About 11.9 million Bitcoins, worth $2.4 billion at recent prices, have been minted since the currency began circulating. Based on recent activity, the network is on track to create around 1.4 million new Bitcoins annually over the next three years, the equivalent of more than $280 million a year at recent exchange rates. Reflecting growing competition, Jackson-Wilde says his gear - which features model names like Erupter, Jalapeno and Spartan - now pulls in a tiny fraction of the Bitcoins it used to, but he expects another $10,000 worth of next-generation equipment to put him in the black. Despite the expenditures, he considers himself a hobbyist committed to supporting the Bitcoin network rather than a serious digital-currency investor. "Buying and selling Bitcoins is enticing, but it's not as enticing as being part of it and actually having hardware," he said. HOBBY STATE Mining with a simple laptop PC was easy back in 2009, when the fledgling Bitcoin network was a fraction of its current size. But within a year, hobbyists found that graphics chips, often referred to as GPUs and widely used by PC gamers, could provide a major boost in mining output. Miners cobbled together dozens of graphics chips in their garages and basements, surrounded by fans to keep the electronics from overheating. Then in 2010, entrepreneurs caught wind. Jeff Ownby and a handful of colleagues had just formed Butterfly Labs with the goal of using off-the-shelf programmable chips, known as FPGAs, to help banks run complex financial risk simulations. "As we were starting down the road planning this, we read about Bitcoin and said 'Wow, this is exactly what we're trying to do here,'" Ownby said. "It was pretty much in a hobby state, so we thought this might be something." Butterfly Labs and other startups optimized FPGAs, which are more typically used in factories and telecommunications gear, to work efficiently on the Bitcoin network. In 2012, the Bitcoin arms race escalated again when Butterfly Labs and rivals, all with little or no semiconductor engineering experience, started designing chips from the ground up. Custom chips, known as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), are normally made by companies focused on high-volume products like televisions - not startups making small batches of digital mining devices. "They're the Wild West," said John Cheng, head of California based-Custom Silicon Solutions, which helped Butterfly Labs design and manufacture its ASIC. "There's a certain rhythm you're used to in the chip business. It's usually two or three years before your ramp, but these guys wanted to ramp in six months." Butterfly Labs said on Thursday it recently took a downpayment for new mining gear in Bitcoins equivalent to $1 million, the largest-ever transaction in the digital currency. It identified the customer as HashTrade, a company selling contracts for cloud-based Bitcoin mining run in data centers. David Johnston, executive director of BitAngels, an investment group, says consolidation in Bitcoin mining is well underway. "Mining has been going through these different generations and going up a learning curve, from amateurs running CPUs and GPUs to new professionally funded companies with experienced chip designers taking it to the state of the art," Johnston said. Still, there remain plenty of oddities in the Bitcoin mining business. Johnston cited ASICMiner, which both sells mining rigs and runs its own mining operations, as one of the largest and most respected operators. The company has even sold stock to online investors who paid in Bitcoins. ASICMiner recently had a market value equivalent to $50 million, according to data on the BitFunder online exchange. But few know where the company is located, or even who is in charge. The chief executive communicates through web forums under the pseudonym "Friedcat." (Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Tiffany Wu and Tim Dobbyn) |
1,383,503,007 | 2013-11-03 18:23:27+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [258, 477, 558, 638, 846, 986, 1159, 1398, 1417, 1606, 1994, 2070, 2322, 2538, 2568, 2661, 2854, 2905, 3064, 3218, 3287, 3734, 3931, 4311, 4399, 4527, 4832, 5017, 5298, 5496, 5581, 5773, 6427, 6738, 6768, 7553, 7727, 7855, 8182, 8414]} | {"Bitcoin": [35]} | Chip designers see dollar signs in Bitcoin miners | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chip-designers-see-dollar-signs-151156223.html | Reuters | https://www.reuters.com/ | By Noel Randewich SUNNYVALE, California (Reuters) - Tucked away in an air conditioned data center in Silicon Valley is a hodgepodge of black boxes, circuit boards and cooling fans owned by 27-year-old Aaron Jackson-Wilde, a modern-day prospector looking for Bitcoins. Since discovering the digital currency a few months ago, Jackson-Wilde has paid about $2,000 for his "rigs," which are powered by specialized computer chips. They are designed to help operate and maintain the Bitcoin network - and, in return, generate a small reward in a process known as "Bitcoin mining." A form of electronic money independent of traditional banking, Bitcoins started circulating in 2009 and have since become the most prominent of several fledgling digital currencies. While they quickly gained a reputation for facilitating drug deals and money laundering, Bitcoins have of late garnered attention from investors, such as venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The volume of transactions using Bitcoins today remains miniscule, but enthusiasts believe the peer-to-peer currency will play a major role in e-commerce and could eventually become as ubiquitous as email. Bitcoin mining is based on a unique feature of the digital currency. Unlike traditional currencies, where a central bank decides how much money to print based on goals like controlling inflation, no central authority governs the supply of Bitcoins. Instead, Bitcoin transactions are tracked by a network of computers that solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions and prevent counterfeit. The system automatically generates new Bitcoins as the math problems are solved and rewards them to the computer operators. In a key twist that keeps inflation in check, the difficulty of the cryptographic math that leads to newly minted coins grows as more computers join the network. That has led some technology professionals to target a new market in souped-up computers and specialized chips aimed at the growing ranks of Bitcoin "miners." Story continues Consider Ravi Iyengar, who first heard of Bitcoins about six months ago. Since then he has quit his job as a senior chip architect at Samsung Electronics and raised $1.5 million to launch CoinTerra. He says he has already pre-sold more than $5 million worth of the hardware he has designed for Bitcoin mining. "I've been in arms races throughout my career - AMD (NYS:AMD), ARM (LSE:ARM), Intel (NSQ:INTC)," said Iyengar, referring to prominent semiconductor companies, "but none of them match the intensity of Bitcoin mining. Each month in Bitcoin mining is like a year." PERISHABLE SILICON Little is known about exactly who started Bitcoin, but the concept was introduced in a 2008 paper written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, Satoshi Nakamoto has become sort of a patron saint among advocates pushing for Bitcoins as an alternative to national currencies. Bitcoin is not backed by physical assets, is not run by any person or group, and its value depends on people's confidence in the currency. The dollar price of Bitcoins has spiked over the past year as more people became aware of the currency and speculators jumped into the market, which remains highly volatile. Bitcoin recently broke $200, compared to $12 a year ago. The goal of Bitcoin miners is to pull in more than what they spend on their rigs - some cost over $20,000 - and the electricity they need to keep the machines running 24 hours a day. That is no easy feat. In the past three months, miners added so much gear with drastically improved chips that processing power on the network jumped from 289 terahashes per second to more than 4,000 terahashes per second, according to The Genesis Block, a blog that collects Bitcoin data. In reaction, the network drove up the difficulty of verifying each cryptographic block of transaction data, making it even harder to break even on investments in costly mining gear. "Bitcoin makes silicon perishable," said Andreas Antonopoulos, a digital currency entrepreneur in San Francisco. "Your mining rig rots away in front of your eyes every day you have it." It has become so hard to make a profit that comparisons to the 19th century California gold rush, when money was often made selling shovels to naive prospectors, have become a running joke among Bitcoin miners. "It's the guys who sell the equipment who are making the money, not the Bitcoin miners," said Jackson-Wilde, a manager at a company that makes motorcycle batteries. CoinTerra believes spending on new Bitcoin mining chips could easily hit $100 million a year for the next three years, assuming no change in prices. While that is peanuts for large semiconductor companies like Intel Corp (NSQ:INTC) and Qualcomm Inc (NSQ:QCOM), it is a lucrative market for a handful of small developers. About 11.9 million Bitcoins, worth $2.4 billion at recent prices, have been minted since the currency began circulating. Based on recent activity, the network is on track to create around 1.4 million new Bitcoins annually over the next three years, the equivalent of more than $280 million a year at recent exchange rates. Reflecting growing competition, Jackson-Wilde says his gear - which features model names like Erupter, Jalapeno and Spartan - now pulls in a tiny fraction of the Bitcoins it used to, but he expects another $10,000 worth of next-generation equipment to put him in the black. Despite the expenditures, he considers himself a hobbyist committed to supporting the Bitcoin network rather than a serious digital-currency investor. "Buying and selling Bitcoins is enticing, but it's not as enticing as being part of it and actually having hardware," he said. HOBBY STATE Mining with a simple laptop PC was easy back in 2009, when the fledgling Bitcoin network was a fraction of its current size. But within a year, hobbyists found that graphics chips, often referred to as GPUs and widely used by PC gamers, could provide a major boost in mining output. Miners cobbled together dozens of graphics chips in their garages and basements, surrounded by fans to keep the electronics from overheating. Then in 2010, entrepreneurs caught wind. Jeff Ownby and a handful of colleagues had just formed Butterfly Labs with the goal of using off-the-shelf programmable chips, known as FPGAs, to help banks run complex financial risk simulations. "As we were starting down the road planning this, we read about Bitcoin and said 'Wow, this is exactly what we're trying to do here,'" Ownby said. "It was pretty much in a hobby state, so we thought this might be something." Butterfly Labs and other startups optimized FPGAs, which are more typically used in factories and telecommunications gear, to work efficiently on the Bitcoin network. In 2012, the Bitcoin arms race escalated again when Butterfly Labs and rivals, all with little or no semiconductor engineering experience, started designing chips from the ground up. Custom chips, known as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), are normally made by companies focused on high-volume products like televisions - not startups making small batches of digital mining devices. "They're the Wild West," said John Cheng, head of California based-Custom Silicon Solutions, which helped Butterfly Labs design and manufacture its ASIC. "There's a certain rhythm you're used to in the chip business. It's usually two or three years before your ramp, but these guys wanted to ramp in six months." Butterfly Labs said on Thursday it recently took a downpayment for new mining gear in Bitcoins equivalent to $1 million, the largest-ever transaction in the digital currency. It identified the customer as HashTrade, a company selling contracts for cloud-based Bitcoin mining run in data centers. David Johnston, executive director of BitAngels, an investment group, says consolidation in Bitcoin mining is well underway. "Mining has been going through these different generations and going up a learning curve, from amateurs running CPUs and GPUs to new professionally funded companies with experienced chip designers taking it to the state of the art," Johnston said. Still, there remain plenty of oddities in the Bitcoin mining business. Johnston cited ASICMiner, which both sells mining rigs and runs its own mining operations, as one of the largest and most respected operators. The company has even sold stock to online investors who paid in Bitcoins. ASICMiner recently had a market value equivalent to $50 million, according to data on the BitFunder online exchange. But few know where the company is located, or even who is in charge. The chief executive communicates through web forums under the pseudonym "Friedcat." (Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Tiffany Wu and Tim Dobbyn) |
1,383,581,100 | 2013-11-04 16:05:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [3695]} | {} | Here's What China's Renminbi Will Look Like In 2020 | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-chinas-renminbi-look-2020-160503473.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)
China has been making moves to replace its trade in dollars with trade in the renminbi.
The Chinese trade in renminbi is going to be worth nearly 30% of their international trade by 2020, according to a research note by Standard Chartered's Becky Liu and her team. This is projected to be worth $3 trillion.
That's $3 trillion that could otherwise be denominated in dollars. And this has implications for the U.S. monetary system, which boasts the dollar as the global reserve currency.
Being the reserve currency has huge advantages.
Since international trade is currently denominated in dollars, there is a constant, ensured demand for dollars. This is one of the reasons the Fed is able to issue large amounts of debt and carry out programs like quantitative easing — buying government issued bonds to lower long-term rates when short-term rates are zero.
This demand for the dollar has also helped keep interest rates and inflation in the U.S. economy low, which makes it an attractive destination for international borrowers.
The push to replace the dollar trade has come, in part, as a result of volatility in the dollar. Political instability in the form of the debt limit and the potential for U.S. debt default, as well as the uncertainty coming from the Fed's taper talks has driven volatility in the greenback.
In order to side-step this volatility, countries have been taking steps to make themselves less dependent on the dollar. Last month,Europe and China signed a €45 billion currency swap dealthat allowed them to settle trades in local currencies in order to sidestep the dollar.India has also made an agreement with Iranto settle trades in rupees.
Currently, the trade in China's renminbi is extremely restricted. Its value trades within a narrow band of the dollar and converting money to and from renminbi isn't easy. This is because the Chinese government is worried about speculative attacks on the currency.
"We expect China’s capital account to be basically open by 2020," writes Liu. "Direct investment will flow much more easily than today, with only large deals subject to approval requirements."
"We think the Renminbi will be a basically freely floating currency, the capital account will be more or less open, and SHIBOR (or a similar rate) will operate as China’s equivalent of the federal funds target rate."
As the onshore renminbi market expands (CNY),the offshore Renminbi (CNH)debt market is expected to grow at 30% a year, and to be worth $500 billion by 2020.
One particularlyblistering editorial in Xinhua, China's official news agency, reflects how the Chinese feel about the U.S. dollar:
" Most recently, the cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising debt ceiling has again left many nations' tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized.
... The developing and emerging market economies need to have more say in major international financial institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, so that they could better reflect the transformations of the global economic and political landscape.
What may also be included as a key part of an effective reform is the introduction of a new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace the dominant U.S. dollar, so that the international community could permanently stay away from the spillover of the intensifying domestic political turmoil in the United States."
But China still has some way to go before it can become a truly international currency.
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1,328,119,352 | 2012-02-01 18:02:32+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [18, 195, 1871, 2827, 3683]} | {"Bitcoin": [0]} | Bitcoin May Be The Currency Of The Future | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-may-currency-future-180232983.html | Investopedia | http://www.investopedia.com/ | Have you heard of Bitcoin? If you're a fan of the NBC legal drama The Good Wife , then you may have learned of it for the first time there. But if you're like most, you probably didn't know that Bitcoin existed or even what it is. You know of the dollar, the euro and the peso as ways to buy items and get paid for your service, but these fiat currencies as they are called may someday be replaced by a virtual currency that is only in digital form. So, how does it work? History The mechanics behind digital currency appear complicated, but the major problem facing it is easy to understand. What would keep you from using it more than once? Assuming your digital currency was placed in your digital wallet, why couldn't you send it out to multiple people at the same time? With traditional currency, there is a physical exchange and unless you have exceptional resources that allow you to counterfeit, you can only use it once until you earn it back. Because of that, digital currency has to be encrypted and just like with a credit card, there has to be some kind of clearing facility that keeps track of when a currency is used and who owns it. The early digital currencies were based around this idea, but having one central place seemed like a recipe for corruption to the creators. So they made the clearing house a process that happened on computers all over the world instead of just one place. They also didn't want the value of the currency to be controlled by a central bank, the way traditional currencies are controlled. The bitcoin system releases a set amount on a certain schedule. In order to earn bitcoins, they have to be mined, much like gold but in a digital format. A complicated cryptographic puzzle has to be solved in order to activate the bitcoin, and the first person to solve it was the successful miner of the bitcoin block and now owns it. Bitcoins started with pennies in value in April of 2010, but quickly rose thereafter. As the value rose, more bitcoin miners set up powerful systems to unlock the new bitcoin codes. As bitcoins gained popularity in 2011 the price rose beyond parity, and after Forbes ran a piece describing bitcoins, the exchange rate hit a peak of $29.57 to purchase one bitcoin. People who had held bitcoins from the beginning were millionaires in less than one year. The Problems As bitcoins rose in popularity, problems developed. This was not a mainstream currency with mainstream businesses adopting it. Who would want to accept payment in a currency without a guaranteed value? Next, people without advanced computer skills weren't interested in the hassle of mining or digital wallets, so the system has never reached beyond a relatively small amount of technologically savvy group of people. Then, a series of online attacks sent the currency plummeting in value. Bitcoins were stolen from exchanges and in one instance, hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of bitcoins were mistakenly deleted. The current value sits around $6, but with demand faltering and less merchants excited about this 21st century currency, some believe that bitcoins may have a shorter life than previously thought. One of the ideas behind digital currency is to remove the market effects of traditional currency, but quite the opposite happened. As the popularity rose, currency speculators were able to manipulate the price making this currency even more volatile than commodities like gold and silver, and much more volatile than the dollar. There's also the problem of trustworthiness. Although traditional or fiat currencies may not be based on an underlying asset like gold, they have an implied value due to their universal adoption. Bitcoins aren't backed by a hard asset or a large government, so there is no guarantee that bitcoins will hold any value in the future. The Bottom Line Those who try to develop digital currency will face many of the same problems that have plagued paper currencies for generations. Because currency is not only a means to buy and sell but also an investment product, the currency may have to be regulated in some form. Although popular venture capitalist Fred Wilson believes that a digital currency not controlled by governments will make a large scale emergence in his lifetime, he still isn't sure if that's a good thing or not. More From Investopedia Are $1 Coins A Better Option Than $1 Bills? 6 Currencies With A Bright Future How The Triffin Dilemma Affects Currencies |
1,383,613,800 | 2013-11-05 01:10:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [581]} | {} | The Future Of China's Capital Markets In One Big Slide | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/future-chinas-capital-markets-one-011000614.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | One of the reasons the renminbi hasn't become a truly international currency is because of the nation's capital controls.
This refers to restrictions on the flow of capital in the form of (cash, stock, foreign direct investment and so on). But in a new Standard Chartered report titled"The Renminbi’s 2020 odyssey,"Becky Liu and her team write that they expect "China’s capital account to be basically open by 2020."
In one slide they show how the "various lines" will be opened up between now and 2020:
Standard Chartered
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1,383,615,840 | 2013-11-05 01:44:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [122, 159, 986, 1162]} | {"Bitcoin": [17]} | Researchers Say 'Bitcoin Is Broken' And Could Collapse | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/researchers-bitcoin-broken-could-collapse-014448102.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Emin Gün Sirer/Twitter
Two computer science researchers at Cornell Universitysay they've uncovered a fundamental flaw in Bitcointhat is so bad, it could kill Bitcoin.
The problem is with how people "mine" bitcoins. Mining is how bitcoins are created. Most people don't mine bitcoins anymore. They buy them or take them as payment. But some people are in the business of mining coins with special bitcoin-mining computers. Even so, it is so difficult and time consuming for a computer to create new bitcoins that some miners have banded together in pools, using multiple computers that work together.
The problem with mining was found byEmin Gün Sirer,an associate professor at Cornell's Computer Science Dept., andIttay Eyal,a Cornell computer science researcher.
They say that when too many miners gang together, they can obtain more than "their fair share" of bitcoins and this can lead to a monopoly over the whole system. They write:
... the problem is intrinsic to the entire way Bitcoin works ... a minority group of miners can obtain revenues in excess of their fair share, and grow in number until they reach a majority. When this point is reached, the Bitcoin ... the currency .. is no longer decentralized; the controlling entity can determine who participates in mining and which transactions are committed, and can even roll back transactions at will.
Their solution, these researchers say, is to change how bitcoin mining works so a single pool of miners can never control more than 25% of the available mining power.
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1,383,653,400 | 2013-11-05 12:10:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [955, 993]} | {} | 10 Tech Things You Need To Know This Morning | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-tech-things-know-morning-120946839.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | AP
Good morning!
Here's what's happening in tech:
1. AOL's third quarter earnings are being reported this morning.Here's a live blog where you can follow along.
2. Apple is building a new 700-employee manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona to make components for various Apple products.
3. Silicon Valley has a serious arrogance problem.
4. Justin Bieber invested $1.1 million in a social network for teenagers, "Shots of Me."
5. Here's a video of LG's new flexible phone, the G Flex, flexing.
6. 8% of US adults get their news on Twitter, according to a new report.About 30% get news on Facebook. The difference is, Twitter's news consumers are "younger, more mobile and more educated."
7. The former creative director of Buzzfeed is bootstrapping a startup, Rather.Rather helps you eliminate every annoying post on your Facebook and Twitter streams.
8. Two computer science researchers at Cornell University say they've uncovered a fundamental flaw in Bitcoin that is so bad, it could kill Bitcoin.
9. Troy Carter's claim to fame, aside from his investments in startups like Dropbox and Uber, is that he's Lady Gaga's manager.But no more.Lady Gaga has dropped him over "creative differences,"according to Hollywood Reporter.
10. Gigaom's Om Malik has written a good, long piece about his history with Twitter and the company's future.
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1,383,740,880 | 2013-11-06 12:28:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [11, 112, 137, 451, 486, 813, 976, 1020, 1084, 1330, 1874, 2099, 2212], "BTC": [608]} | {"Bitcoin": [33]} | Wall Street Analyst Explains Why Bitcoin Is Back From The Dead And Surging To All-Time Highs | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-hits-time-high-analyst-122856963.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Overnight, Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $270, surpassing the peak price of $266 seen at the height of the Bitcoin mania in April.
"Bitcoin is making a new high this week, breaking through the spiky bubble levels of April in a pretty controlled and orderly manner," writes ConvergEx Group chief market strategist Nick Colas in a note to clients this morning. "What gives?"
bitcoin.clarkmoody.com
In the note, Colas touches offers a few points on Bitcoin's second wind:
The biggest Bitcoin exchange is now in China, displacing Japanese, American and European sources of demand. That enterprise is called BTC China, and its CEO Bobby Lee hails from Yahoo! and Walmart China. Oh, and he graduated from Stanford with a degree in Computer Science. In short, an apparently pretty clever fellow.
Our sources in the Bitcoin community also agree that Second Market, the New York-based business best known for trading pre-IPO company stock, has become a major player in demand for Bitcoin. Earlier this year they started the Bitcoin Investment Trust, an open-ended product to buy and hold Bitcoins. There’s no way to know how much Second Market has purchased on behalf of its clients, but it must be a popular offering – the banner ad on their site for the trust occupied the top third of their front page.
It’s not all been roses for Bitcoin, even in this recent run-up. Back in September computer science researchers from UC – San Diego showed that it was actually fairly easy to track individual transactions in the bitcoin transaction ledger. Just this week, academics at Cornell proposed that bitcoin could eventually be co-opted by a handful of "Miners" who could hijack the system.
Colas also chalks up part of the currency's resilience — why it's seemingly "minted on Teflon" — to its limited supply.
"In the 4-ish minutes it has taken you to read this far, the most new Bitcoins that might have been issued is 25, or $6,250," he writes. "In the same timeframe, the Federal Reserve has pushed another $7.8 million into the financial system with Quantitative Easing."
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1,383,742,213 | 2013-11-06 12:50:13+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [13, 254, 311, 469, 531, 822, 973, 1150, 1239, 1271, 1437]} | {"Bitcoin": [7]} | Why Do Bitcoins Keep Rising in Value? | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-bitcoins-keep-rising-value-125013354.html | 24/7 Wall St. | http://247wallst.com | The world of Bitcoin and virtual currencies is a strange one. Imagine an open source currency with a digital life and no real nation behind it. Then imagine that the price of the currency would double yet again in just over a month. This is the story of Bitcoin, and it feels a bit like deja vu all over again. Bitcoin prices have effectively doubled since the beginning of October. The price had been stable for months but then rose from around $125 to $265 recently. Bitcoin's prior high had been $266, but the Mt.Gox shows that Bitcoin's new high is $270. At last look, the last trade was down at $263.11 ALSO READ: Ten Brands That Will Disappear in 2014 The Wall Street Journal recently reported that a couple of Senate committees will hold hearings regarding policy on virtual currencies in the weeks ahead. Policing Bitcoin and virtual currencies generally comes with a reference of being able to be untracked for criminal activities. A recent driver of the value of Bitcoin may simply be nothing more than more retailers accepting it at the same time that investors are interested again. If you will recall, we even recently highlighted a new Bitcoin trust from SecondMarket. In July we pointed out that the only thing as dumb as a Bitcoin ETF would be a gun ETF. Bitcoin's rise in value is even on the heels of a summer Ponzi scheme warning from the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. As reminder, there are accused flaws in Bitcoin. The market value of all bitcoins are currently close to $3 billion. Here is the one-month chart from the Mt.Gox website: |
1,383,777,720 | 2013-11-06 22:42:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [22, 885, 1036, 1894, 1990, 2073, 2206, 2246, 2665, 2753, 2836, 3138, 3200, 3243]} | {"Bitcoin": [0]} | Bitcoin Is A Joke | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-total-joke-224200448.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/Eliana Aponte
Bitcoin is back in the news, as the digital currency has surged to new all-time highs in recent weeks.
A few weeks ago, it was just above $100. Today it's over $260.
This surge has promptedTimothy B Lee at The Washington Postto ask whether those who have called it a bubble in the past should retract and admit that they were wrong.
Well I'm not totally sure if I've called it a bubble, but I have spoken negatively of it, and I'll say that I still think it's a joke, and probably in a bubble.
Now first of all, I find the premise of Lee's post to be hilarious. The currency has been surging several percent every day lately, and that's evidence that it'snotin a bubble?
Before going on, I want to be clear that saying something is a bubble is not saying it will go down. It could go to $500 or $1000 or $10,000. That's the nature of manias.
But make no mistake, Bitcoin is not the currency of the future. It has no intrinsic value.
Now this idea of "intrinsic value" when it comes to currency bothers people, and Bitcoin Bugs will immediately ask why the U.S. dollar has intrinsic value. There's an answer to that. The U.S. Dollar has intrinsic value because the U.S. government which sets the laws of doing business in the United States says it has intrinsic value. If you want to conduct commerce in the United States you have to pay taxes, and there's only one currency you're allowed to pay taxes in: U.S. dollars. There's no getting around this fact. Furthermore, if you want to use the banking system at all, there's no choice but to use U.S. dollars, because that's the currency of the Fed which is behind the whole thing.
On top of all these laws requiring the U.S. dollar to be used, the United States has a gigantic military that can force people around the world to use dollars (if it came to that) so yes, there's a lot of real-world value behind greenbacks.
Bitcoin? Nada. There's nothing keeping it being a thing. If people lose faith in it, it's over. Bitcoin is fiat currency in the most literal sense of the word.
But it gets worse. Bitcoin is mostly just a speculative vehicle. Yes, there are PR stunts about bars and other shops accepting bitcoins. And there is a Bitcoin ATM for some reason. But mostly Bitcoin is a speculative vehicle. And really, you'd be insane to actually conduct a sizable amount of commerce in bitcoins. That's because the price swings so wildly, that the next day, there's a good chance that one of the parties will have gotten royally screwed. Either the purchaser of the good will have ended up totally blowing a huge opportunity (by not holding longer) or the seller will be totally screwed (if Bitcoin instantly plunges). The very volatility that excited people to want to play the Bitcoin game is death when it comes to real transactions in the real world.
Again, Bitcoin might go up a lot more before it ultimately ends. That's the nature of bubbles. The dotcom bubble crashed a bunch of times on its way up. Then one day it ended. The same will happen with this.
In the meantime, have fun speculating!
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1,383,788,944 | 2013-11-07 01:49:04+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [437, 1531, 1728, 2528, 2616, 2713]} | {} | New Silk Road drug bazaar opens a month after FBI bust | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/silk-road-drug-bazaar-opens-month-fbi-bust-014904895.html | Reuters | https://www.reuters.com/ | By Noel Randewich SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A new anonymous Internet marketplace for illegal drugs debuted on Wednesday, with the same name and appearance as the Silk Road website shut down by U.S. law enforcement authorities a month ago. Like its predecessor, the new Silk Road listed hundreds of advertisements for marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and other illegal drugs available for purchase from independent sellers using the anonymous Bitcoin digital currency. On October 1, the Federal Bureau of Investigation shut down the original Silk Road and arrested its alleged mastermind, Ross William Ulbricht, 29, known online as "Dread Pirate Roberts," in San Francisco. "It took the FBI two-and-a-half years to do what they did ... but four weeks of temporary silence is all they got," a site administrator wrote, also using the "Dread Pirate Roberts" moniker. The FBI declined to comment on the new version of the Silk Road. For more than two years, the original site acted like an eBay of vice, allowing users to buy and sell illegal goods and services on the assumption that they were safe from the law. Deliveries were made through the mail in discrete packages. U.S. authorities also say Ulbricht had tried to call out a hit on a user who had threatened to expose the identities of thousands of Silk Road users. Ulbricht's lawyer on Wednesday said his client would plead not guilty to drug trafficking, hacking and money laundering charges. The charges against Ulbricht said his website generated sales of more than 9.5 million Bitcoins, roughly equivalent to $1.2 billion. The new website improves on technology from the previous Silk Road meant to keep identities secret, including measures to keep users from losing their Bitcoins in case the site shuts down, according to the new Dread Pirate Roberts. Senator Tom Carper, a top lawmaker on the Homeland Security committee, who plans to hold a hearing on digital currencies this month, said the new Silk Road site shows that government needs to adapt to fast-moving technology. "Rather than play 'whack-a-mole' with the latest website, currency, or other method criminals are using in an effort to evade the law, we need to develop thoughtful, nimble and sensible federal policies that protect the public without stifling innovation and economic growth," Carper said in a statement. A week after authorities shut down the Silk Road, British police said they arrested four men accused of being significant users of the site. Two weeks ago, federal prosecutors said 144,336 Bitcoins were discovered on Ulbricht's confiscated computer, adding to more than 30,000 Bitcoins previously seized. With the digital currency trading at an all-time on Wednesday, those Bitcoins were worth close to $50 million, according to the Mt Gox trading website. Like the original Silk Road, users access the new site using a no-cost, anti-surveillance service known as the Tor network instead of traditional web browsers. The relaunched Silk Road will soon hire staff to handle marketing for the site, the administrator mentioned in his post. "The Silk Road has risen once more. ... Open communication with your old suppliers and customers, let this wonderful news be taken to all corners of the Tor Network and beyond," the person wrote. (Additional reporting by Emily Flitter in New York and Brett Wolf in St. Louis; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Lisa Shumaker) |
1,383,830,411 | 2013-11-07 13:20:11+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [17, 203, 490, 633, 797, 830, 1034, 1630, 1888, 1935, 2122, 2164, 2198]} | {"Bitcoin": [0]} | Bitcoin Foundation Responds To — But Doesn't Deny — Cornell Study's Claim It Could Collapse | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-foundation-responds-doesnt-deny-132011632.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Shutterstock
The Bitcoin Foundation — a sort of non-profit industry lobby group for the online crypto-currency — has welcomed an academic paperpublished by researchers at Cornell University which claims Bitcoin could collapseif "selfish" owners begin colluding with each other. But the foundation did not specifically deny its claims.
Ina blog post, foundation board member Gavin Andresen says:
Let me start with how fantastic it is that we’re seeing more academic interest and research in Bitcoin-the-system. In the coming months, I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more research claiming to have found ways of making various pieces of Bitcoin better. Some of it will even turn out to be both practical and correct.
He doesn't specifically knock down the Cornell paper's central claim, which is that Bitcoin "miners," who create new Bitcoins by crunching code which churns out the currency according to a set formula that prevents inflation, could collapse the system by colluding until one group of collaborators owns a majority of all Bitcoins. Andresen does express doubts about the study:
... I’m not going to write about the specific claims in the paper; lots of smart people are, or soon will be, thinking really hard about the issues raised and whether or not the researcher’s model matches reality. However, it is good to note that in my initial review, I believe the paper’s assertion of a fundamental flaw is based on some over-simplified assumptions about how the bitcoin mining market works.
What's interesting about the foundation's forthcoming response — or lack thereof — is how it will advance the debate overwhether Bitcoin is a reliable non-sovereign internet currency, or merely the ultimate example of a fiat currency (that only exists because people believe in it) caught in a speculative bubble. Because if the Cornell researchers are right, and the people minting new Bitcoins can control the market for them, then Bitcoin is essentially worthless, because who would want to make transactions in a currency whose value was decided by a single entity?
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1,383,837,287 | 2013-11-07 15:14:47+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [307, 664, 956, 1678, 2192, 2541, 3472, 3574]} | {"Bitcoin": [29]} | GoCoin Opens for Business as Bitcoin's First Truly International Payment Processing Service, Receives $550,000 From Leading Angels | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gocoin-opens-business-bitcoins-first-151447428.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | SINGAPORE and SANTA MONICA, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 7, 2013) - GoCoin (www.gocoin.com) today announced that it has raised a seed round of over $550,000 in funding to bring to market the first truly open and international platform to facilitate the purchase of goods and services across the world bought with Bitcoin, the increasingly popular digital currency. The seed funding comes from an impressive list of connected, global investors from Silicon Valley, Silicon Beach, Asia and Europe, including former Facebook and Amazon executive Owen Van Natta and Ooma founder Andrew Frame.
GoCoin will begin its expansion as the first true payment processing service for Bitcoin with an initial focus on Asian and South American countries, where the challenges of accepting credit cards and purchasing goods and services online between even neighboring countries can be especially difficult. In terms of market verticals, GoCoin will initially focus on providing Bitcoin payment processing for e-commerce, digital content and interactive/social gaming companies.
Co-founder Steve Beauregard will serve as GoCoin's CEO, and gaming pioneer Brock Pierce will serve as chairman of the board. Over the past few months, the GoCoin team has been quietly developing its technology with engineers in Singapore, Argentina and the U.S. The company is currently in testing with its first merchants in private beta and plans to officially launch publicly in November.
"As digital currency becomes more pervasive, it's imperative that software developers have advanced tools to fully integrate a scalable digital currency payment system across the globe. Merchants should be able to accept not just Bitcoin, but also other digital currencies as those emerge. GoCoin is both easy to implement and inexpensive to operate," said Steve Beauregard. "Our team of seasoned e-commerce veterans has designed GoCoin so high-volume merchants with complex back-end requirements can securely accept digital currency payments without fear of their internal systems being compromised."
"The future of currency is digital and the old payment systems used today were not designed for the Internet," said Pierce. "GoCoin will help Bitcoin go far beyond merchant acceptance; it will simplify cross-border commercial transactions."
The list of participating investors in GoCoin includes, but is not limited to:
• Owen Van Natta, former COO/CRO of Facebook and a seven-year Amazon executive
• Andrew Frame, founder and CEO of Ooma
• BitAngels, the first nationwide angel network for Bitcoin startups
• Stephens Investment Management
• Mikael Pawlo, CEO of Mr Green & Co AB and co-founder of Maltese online casino Mr Green LTD, through his investment company, Derzhava Holdings LTD
• Jonathan Congdon, co-founder and President at Beachbody LLC (marketers of P90X and other fitness brands)
• Ruvento Ventures, a Singapore/Russian venture capital firm
• Ronnie Wee, Managing Partner, IncuVest Pte. Ltd, a Singapore VC firm
• Gary Stiffelman, Partner at Los Angeles entertainment law firm Ziffen Brittenham LLP
• Demarest Ventures
• David Neuman, Owner, Blackrock Productions; former President, Current TV; former Media & Chief Programming Officer, CNN; former President, Walt Disney Television and Touchstone Television
For more information about the GoCoin payment gateway, please visithttp://www.gocoin.com.
About GoCoinThe GoCoin payment gateway makes it easier than ever for online and retail merchants to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. GoCoin enables international merchants to reap the benefits of accepting Bitcoin, while taking away the perceived risk of accepting digital currency. Founded in July 2013, GoCoin is headquartered in Singapore with offices in Santa Monica, California. For more information, please visithttp://www.gocoin.com. |
1,383,856,140 | 2013-11-07 20:29:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1817]} | {} | These Insects Have Been Having Sex For 165 Million Years | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/scientists-found-oldest-fossil-record-202958968.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | One sexual position has been good enough for the froghopper for 165 million years. Scientists have discovered the oldest fossil record of insect copulation.
You can see the fossil below. The male is on the right and the female is on the left.
Li S, Shih C, Wang C, Pang H, Ren D
Fossil records of mating insects are very rare, so scientists don't know much about the evolution of mating, but this fossil suggests that the froghopper has used the same method since the middle of the Jurassic period.
Dong Ren and his team from Capital Normal University discovered the fossil in northeast China and the study waspublished in PLoS Oneon Nov. 6.
Even though the insects in the fossil look like they are in a belly-to-belly position, the scientists can't rule out that they were actually using the side-to-side position that modern species of froghoppers use. The imperfect nature of fossil records makes it difficult for the scientists to determine the exact orientation of the froghoppers. Either way, the scientists say in the paper that both positions use the same kind of abdomen and genitalia twisting.
Below is a picture of a modern froghopper species mating:
Li S, Shih C, Wang C, Pang H, Ren D
Froghoppers get their name because they live in forests and hop around like frogs on leaves and shrubs. Froghoppers belong to a family of insects called Cercopoidea that includes about 3,000 species. The earliest fossil record of the modern froghopper dates back to the Paleocene age — about 60 million years ago. Scientists believe these modern insects evolved from those shown in the fossil.
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1,383,859,620 | 2013-11-07 21:27:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [9412]} | {} | Groupon Whiffs On Earnings, Stock Crashes ... Then Stages An Amazing Comeback | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/live-groupon-earnings-205000377.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | AP
Groupon CEO Eric Lefkofsky
Grouponearnings are out!
The stock is down in after-hours trading after the company missed analyst estimates on revenue and gave worse than expected guidance.
An immediate 10% after-hour drop followed a 5% drop during the day. Since September the stock has been falling.
But, after the company's earnings call the stock made a comeback and was up ~1.5%.
The stock's turnaround seems to be thanks toa new planto allow more sellers on the platform.
In addition to announcing earnings, Groupon announced that it acquired Ticket Monster, an e-commerce company from Korea.
Here are the big numbers versus expectations:
• Revenues: $595 million versus $615.69 million expected .
• Earnings per share: $0.02 versus $0.01 expected.
• Guidance: Q4 EPS $0.00 to $0.02 versus $0.06 expected.
• Guidance: Q4 Revenue: $690-$740 million versus $723.68 million expected.
Groupon's core daily deals business — those emails you get every day — suffered another decline. Here is the daily deals revenue over time:
Groupon / BI
Here's the full earnings release:
Groupon Announces Third Quarter 2013 Results and Agreement to Acquire Ticket Monster
• Gross billings of $1.34 billion
• Revenue of $595.1 million
• GAAP operating income of $13.8 million; $39.2 million excluding stock compensation costs
• GAAP loss per share of $0.00; earnings per share of $0.02 excluding stock compensation costs
CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Groupon, Inc. (GRPN) today announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2013.
"Our Local business showed continued strength in the quarter, particularly in North America," said Eric Lefkofsky, CEO of Groupon. "Mobile adoption continued to increase in Q3, reflected in our record 9 million app downloads. We're pleased with our progress, but we still have work to do as we transform the business from our daily deal email roots to a full ecommerce marketplace."
"We're also excited to announce today that we've signed an agreement to acquire Ticket Monster, one of the leading ecommerce companies in Korea," added Lefkofsky. "Ticket Monster has been successful building a mobile commerce business in one of the largest markets in the world. It will serve as the cornerstone of our Asian business, bringing scale and ecommerce expertise to that region."
Third Quarter 2013 Summary
Gross billings, which reflect the total dollar value of customer purchases of goods and services, excluding any applicable taxes and net of estimated refunds, increased 10% globally to $1.34 billion in the third quarter 2013, compared with$1.22 billion in the third quarter 2012. North America growth of 20% and EMEA growth of 12% was offset by a 13% decline in Rest of World.
Revenue increased 5% to $595.1 million in the third quarter 2013, compared with $568.6 million in the third quarter 2012. North America revenue growth of 24% was offset by a 21% decline in EMEA and a 4% decline in Rest of World.
Gross profit was $359.6 million in the third quarter 2013, compared with $386.8 million in the third quarter 2012.
Operating income was $13.8 million in the third quarter 2013, compared with $25.4 million in the third quarter 2012. Operating income decreased $13.6 million compared with the second quarter 2013.
Operating income excluding stock compensation and acquisition-related costs, net, a non-GAAP financial measure, was$39.2 million in the third quarter 2013, compared with $50.5 million in the third quarter 2012. Operating income excluding stock compensation and acquisition-related costs, net, decreased $19.9 million compared with the second quarter 2013.
Revenue and operating profit in the third quarter 2012 included a one-time increase of $18.5 million related to breakage, or income related to unredeemed Groupons internationally, resulting from a tax ruling in Germany.
Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure, was $62.3 million in the third quarter 2013, compared with $65.8 million in the third quarter 2012.
Third quarter 2013 net loss attributable to common stockholders was $2.6 million, or $0.00 per share, including stock compensation and acquisition-related costs, net, of $25.3 million ($17.0 million net of tax). Earnings per share excluding stock compensation and acquisition-related costs, net of tax, a non-GAAP financial measure, was $0.02 per share.
Operating cash flow for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2013 was $105.9 million. Free cash flow, a non-GAAP financial measure, was negative $27.0 million in the third quarter 2013, bringing free cash flow for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2013 to $22.3 million.
At the end of the quarter, Groupon had $1.1 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
Definitions and reconciliations of all non-GAAP financial measures are included below in the section titled "Non-GAAP Financial Measures" and in the accompanying tables.
Third Quarter Operating Highlights
• Global units:Consolidated units, defined as vouchers and products sold before cancellations and refunds, increased 9% year-over-year to 46 million. North America units increased 19%, EMEA units increased 1%, and Rest of World units were flat year-over-year.
• Active deals:At the end of the third quarter 2013, active deals in North America were estimated to be more than 65,000 on average, compared with more than 54,000 at the end of the second quarter 2013.
• Active customers:Active customers, or customers that have purchased a Groupon within the last twelve months, grew 10% year-over-year, to 43.5 million as of September 30, 2013, comprising 19.9 million in North America, 14.0 million in EMEA, and 9.6 million in Rest of World.
• Customer spend:Third quarter 2013 trailing twelve month billings per average active customer was $137, compared with $138 in the second quarter 2013.
• Mobile:In September 2013, North America achieved a milestone, with more than half of transactions completed on mobile devices. This contributed to the more than 40% of transactions completed on mobile devices in the month globally. More than 60 million people have now downloaded Groupon mobile apps worldwide, with more than 9 million people downloading them in the third quarter alone.
• Marketplace:The rollout of Groupon's marketplace ("Pull") continues to gain traction. In September 2013, approximately 6% of total traffic in North America was related to search activity, with customers that search spending over 25% more than those that do not.
Share Repurchase Program
During the third quarter of 2013, Groupon repurchased 770,900 shares of Class A common stock under its share repurchase authorization at an average price of $11.67 per share, for an aggregate purchase price of $9.0 million. Up to approximately $291 million of Class A common stock remains available for repurchase under the August 2013 share repurchase authorization. The program, which is intended to offset dilution from employee stock grants, terminates in August 2015.
Acquisition of Ticket Monster
Groupon also announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Ticket Monster, a Korean ecommerce company, for aggregate consideration of $260 million, including at least $100 million in cash, and up to $160 million in Groupon Class A common stock, with the final cash and stock allocation to be determined upon close.
Ticket Monster is a leading ecommerce company in South Korea, and a subsidiary of LivingSocial, Inc. Founded in 2010, the Company serves millions of customers with a broad range of product, local and travel offers, and is one of the fastest growing ecommerce companies in the region. Ticket Monster has more than $800 million of annualized billings.
"Ticket Monster is a great fit for Groupon. The team shares our vision, already leveraging a truly mobile marketplace as well as one that has little reliance on email," said Lefkofsky. "Ticket Monster is one of Korea's most recognized and trusted brands, and we're thrilled to have them join the family."
The transaction is currently expected to close in the first half of 2014, subject to regulatory approval by the Korean Fair Trade Commission and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.
Outlook
In the fourth quarter 2013, Groupon anticipates normal seasonal strength and strong holiday sales interest, in addition to email headwinds and further investment in marketing initiatives to drive adoption of the Pull marketplace. As a result, for the fourth quarter 2013, the Company expects revenue of between $690 million and $740 million, operating income excluding stock compensation and acquisition-related expenses of between $40 million and $60 million, and earnings per share excluding stock compensation and acquisition-related expenses, net of tax, of between $0.00 and$0.02. Stock compensation is expected to be approximately $30 million, or approximately $20 million net of tax.
As a result, Groupon now expects full year 2013 GAAP operating income of between $72 million and $92 million.
This outlook includes costs related to the acquisition of Ticket Monster. It does not assume any additional impact of this or other acquisitions or investments, or material changes in foreign exchange rates.
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1,383,865,234 | 2013-11-07 23:00:34+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1831]} | {} | Two tied to online drug market plead guilty to U.S. drug charges | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/two-tied-online-drug-market-plead-guilty-u-230126995.html | Reuters | https://www.reuters.com/ | By Aruna Viswanatha WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two men tied to an illegal online drug marketplace pleaded guilty to drug charges, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday, a day after the alleged mastermind of the website indicated he would plead not guilty. An administrator of the Silk Road website, Curtis Green, pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute cocaine, and a vendor, Jacob Theodore George IV, pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute drugs including heroin, said Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland. "People who believe they can commit crimes anonymously using the Internet should reconsider," Rosenstein said in a statement. A lawyer for Green declined comment, and a lawyer for George did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The pleas came amid a crackdown by U.S. authorities on the use of virtual currencies for illegal activity. Last month, Ross William Ulbricht, who prosecutors say operated the Silk Road website, was arrested and FBI agents shut the website down. On Wednesday a lawyer for Ulbricht, who remains in custody, said his client would plead not guilty to drug trafficking, hacking and money laundering charges. A new website with the Silk Road name and appearance has opened for business. 'FLUSH' AND 'CHRONICPAIN' The Silk Road website, which was used to anonymously buy or sell illegal drugs, also offered guns and assassins for sale, and tutorials on hacking ATM machines, prosecutors said. Green, 47, who is also known as "Flush" and "chronicpain," was responsible for responding to complaints from buyers and sellers on Silk Road, mediating their disputes, and investigating any law enforcement activity on the website, according to prosecutors. Green helped an undercover agent find a buyer for one kilogram (2.2 lbs) of cocaine for around $27,000 in virtual Bitcoin currency, prosecutors said, and acted as a go-between on the deal. An undercover postal inspector delivered the drugs to Green at his home in Utah, officials said. George, a 32-year-old Maryland resident, was the first vendor selling illegal drugs on Silk Road to be arrested, officials said. He pleaded guilty on Wednesday, the government said. Green faces up to 40 years in prison and George faces up to 20 years. (Reporting by Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Paul Simao) |
1,383,865,286 | 2013-11-07 23:01:26+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1831]} | {} | Two tied to online drug market plead guilty to U.S. drug charges | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/two-tied-online-drug-market-230034387.html | Reuters | http://www.reuters.com/ | By Aruna Viswanatha
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two men tied to an illegal online drug marketplace pleaded guilty to drug charges, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday, a day after the alleged mastermind of the website indicated he would plead not guilty.
An administrator of the Silk Road website, Curtis Green, pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute cocaine, and a vendor, Jacob Theodore George IV, pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute drugs including heroin, said Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland.
"People who believe they can commit crimes anonymously using the Internet should reconsider," Rosenstein said in a statement.
A lawyer for Green declined comment, and a lawyer for George did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The pleas came amid a crackdown by U.S. authorities on the use of virtual currencies for illegal activity. Last month, Ross William Ulbricht, who prosecutors say operated the Silk Road website, was arrested and FBI agents shut the website down.
On Wednesday a lawyer for Ulbricht, who remains in custody, said his client would plead not guilty to drug trafficking, hacking and money laundering charges.
A new website with the Silk Road name and appearance has opened for business.
'FLUSH' AND 'CHRONICPAIN'
The Silk Road website, which was used to anonymously buy or sell illegal drugs, also offered guns and assassins for sale, and tutorials on hacking ATM machines, prosecutors said.
Green, 47, who is also known as "Flush" and "chronicpain," was responsible for responding to complaints from buyers and sellers on Silk Road, mediating their disputes, and investigating any law enforcement activity on the website, according to prosecutors.
Green helped an undercover agent find a buyer for one kilogram (2.2 lbs) of cocaine for around $27,000 in virtual Bitcoin currency, prosecutors said, and acted as a go-between on the deal.
An undercover postal inspector delivered the drugs to Green at his home in Utah, officials said.
George, a 32-year-old Maryland resident, was the first vendor selling illegal drugs on Silk Road to be arrested, officials said.
He pleaded guilty on Wednesday, the government said.
Green faces up to 40 years in prison and George faces up to 20 years.
(Reporting by Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Paul Simao) |
1,383,866,760 | 2013-11-07 23:26:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1825]} | {} | Google Is Banning All Chrome Add-Ons That Don't Come From Its Chrome Web Store | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-banning-chrome-add-ons-232651167.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Photo Illustration By Steve Kovach
In the name of fighting bad guy hackers,Google on Thursday saidit will not allow its Windows Chrome browser to run any add-ons unless they are downloaded from its ownChrome Web store.
Unsanctioned add-ons will bebanned beginning in January.
Add-ons, which are also called extensions, are little apps that add extra functions to the browser. For instance, they can let you post stuff from the Web to your social media accounts or create to-do lists, etc.
Sometimes a cloud service will offer an add-on and let you install it right from its own web page. If that add-on isn't also in the Chrome Web store, this will be forbidden. However, enterprise departments will still be able to install add-ons through their own enterprise tools, Google said.
This comes on top of a new feature Google added last weekthat will let you reset your browsercompletely, including wiping out all add-ons you've downloaded. That way, if you think you've downloaded an evil one, you can get rid of it.
There's been some jaded comments across the Internet about the banned add-ons. Some people are saying thatGoogle will ban add-ons it doesn't like, like ones that let people download YouTube videos. We'll see.
PC World's Brad Chacos also points out thatGoogle doesn't store add-ons for free.
Developers who want to include their Chrome Web Storehave to pay a $5 registration fee—and if your Chrome Web Store-hosted app or extension generates income, Google will takea 5 percent cut of the revenue.
Still, many PC users could find that they like the trade-off: less choice for more security.
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1,383,881,526 | 2013-11-08 03:32:06+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1029]} | {} | Man pleads guilty to playing key drug site role | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-pleads-guilty-playing-key-210407940.html | Associated Press | https://apnews.com/ | BALTIMORE (AP) -- A Utah man pleaded guilty to a drug conspiracy charge Thursday for his role in an online black market known as the Silk Road that authorities say processed more than $1 billion worth of illicit business. The guilty plea from Curtis Clark Green, 47, comes one month after federal authorities shut down the drug-dealing website, which conducted business with tough-to-track digital currency and sought to protect the anonymity of its users by operating on an encrypted network. Green, whose lawyer identified the defendant as being from Spanish Fork, Utah, declined to comment after the plea hearing. His attorney also declined comment. Dressed in a white shirt and tie, and gripping a cane as he entered the courtroom, Green answered standard 'yes' or 'no' questions from the judge but made no detailed statement about the allegations. The website allowed users to anonymously browse through nearly 13,000 listings under categories like "Cannabis," ''Psychedelics" and "Stimulants" before making purchases using Bitcoin, a form of online currency. It offered various illegal services along with drugs, and as of July, had nearly 1 million registered users from around the world, according to court papers. A so-called hidden site, Silk Road used an online tool to mask the location of its servers and generated an estimated $1.2 billion since it started in 2011, authorities say. It was shut down when authorities arrested Ross William Ulbricht, a college-educated San Francisco man they allege masterminded the operation while hiding behind the alias of "Dread Pirate Roberts," an apparent reference to a main character in "The Princess Bride," the 1987 comedy film based on a novel of the same name. He was arrested in a branch of San Francisco's public library, where authorities say he was chatting online with a cooperating witness. Ulbricht, 29, who is also charged in Maryland in a failed murder-for-hire plot, was ordered held after a court appearance this week in New York. His lawyer said that his client is innocent and is not the person who used the "Dread Pirate Roberts" alias. Story continues The investigation was launched in 2011 in Baltimore, where agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations formed the "Marco Polo" task force — with representatives from other law enforcement agencies — to target Silk Road and its administrators. William Winter, the office's special agent in charge, said in a statement that his agents will continue to pursue crimes committed by users of "networks and digital currency designed to provide anonymity." Green, who used the aliases of "Flush" and "chronicpain," acknowledged as part of his guilty plea that he served as an administrator for the website. The position gave him access to the details of financial transactions conducted through the black market bazaar and also made him responsible for fielding questions and complaints from buyers and sellers and determining whether law enforcement officials were secretly poking around the site, the authorities said. Prosecutors say he also served as a middleman between a drug buyer who operated on Silk Road and an undercover agent who posed as a cocaine smuggler able to deal large quantities of the drug. The agent contacted Ulbricht, who directed Green and other website administrators to find dealers willing to purchase a high volume of drugs, authorities say. Green admitted helping the undercover agent hook up with a particular buyer who was active on the site; the vendor and undercover agent negotiated a cocaine deal for roughly $27,000, and Green agreed to have the package sent to him, according to prosecutors. He was arrested in January after the one-kilogram package was delivered to his house by an undercover U.S. Postal Service inspector. He faces up to 40 years in prison at his sentencing in February. His court appearance followed a similar plea Tuesday from Jacob George IV, an Edgewood, Md., man who admitted selling drugs via Silk Road. |
1,383,920,640 | 2013-11-08 14:24:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [84, 108, 343, 378, 1159, 1314, 1441, 1694, 1880, 2009, 2081, 2189, 2234, 2340, 2391]} | {"Bitcoin": [31]} | 18-Year-Old Reports $1 Million Bitcoin Theft From 'Bank' He Controlled — And Says He Can't Call The Cops | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/18-old-reports-1-million-142458461.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Instagram/grace_m_allen
An 18-year-old Australian says that he has had$1 million in Bitcoin stolen from the Bitcoin "bank" he was running, but he cannot go to the police because he worries that giving authorities the keys to investigate the case is the same as giving them control of the money itself, according to ABC Australia.
The man ran aBitcoin bank called Tradefortress.
Bitcoin transactions cannot be reversed if the receiving party doesn't agree to the refund.ABC noted:
The bitcoin transaction trail is designed to be anonymous, which has led to speculation this was an inside job and that TradeFortress took the coins for himself.
But when asked by the ABC's AM he strenuously denied those accusations, and said that despite his $1 million loss he is unlikely to report the theft to the police.
"The police don't have access to any more information than any user does when it comes to bitcoin. Some say it gives them control of their money," TradeFortress said.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Tradefortress operated out of computers located in this apartment building in Hornsby, New South Wales:
Google Street View
It is possible to steal Bitcoin — an online currency that uses an uncrackable cryptography to make itself permanent — but it is difficult to hide the money afterward.Wired notes:
Bitcoin trades are public: all transactions are shared in a publicly available file called the Blockchain that’s posted to the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network.
That public ledger makes it pretty tough for big-time criminals to launder money through the network. At least that’s what researchers at the University of California and George Mason University found when they studied the Bitcoin network by developing sophisticated tools to track how money was moving around it.
Meiklejohn and her fellow researchers tried some of those services out — sites with names like Bitcoin Laundry and Bitmix — and they report some pretty rough experiences. One service didn’t work. It simply returned the same Bitcoins, un-laundered.
Another service stole their money.
Nonetheless, Bitcoin theft is common enough to be a phenomenon with a history.Here is a site dedicated to tracking major Bitcoin thefts.
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1,384,123,320 | 2013-11-10 22:42:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [55, 164, 592, 650, 737, 824, 891, 1133, 1574, 1723, 1785, 1828]} | {"Bitcoin": [18, 60]} | If You Believe In Bitcoin, You Should Never Buy Anything In Bitcoin | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/believe-bitcoin-never-buy-anything-224208387.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/Stephen Lam
A chain of block erupters used for Bitcoin mining is pictured at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, California, October 28, 2013.
Many Bitcoin believers think that the digital currency will one day become the pre-eminent currency of the internet. They basically see it becoming the internet's version of gold in that it's naturally scarce, independent, virtually impossible to manipulate, and crucially suited for a digital world when money ought to be able to be moved seamlessly and at no cost.
Well here's a tip: If you think that this is true, then never use Bitcoin in a transaction.
As more people have gotten into Bitcoin, the price has gone way up.
Virtually everyone who has ever bought anything in Bitcoin has been a huge loser, who would have been better suited just holding onto the Bitcoins instead.
Remember the pizza that was purchased for $25 in Bitcoins years back? Had the person not bought that pizza, it would be worth nearly $3 million. That purchase was a catastrophic decision, as that was probably the most expensive pizza of all time.
Of course this presents a Catch-22. How can Bitcoin become a real currency if it's not used in transactions? And why would anyone use it in transactions if becoming a real currency offers so much more price appreciation? This contradiction is a core problem, and it's a reason why it's probably doomed to fail (real currencies don't have this issue, since central banks prevent rapid price appreciation, and they mandate that the currency be used).
But really, if you're thinking that Bitcoin is going to be huge, it'd be insane and irresponsible to buy anything with it.
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1,384,123,320 | 2013-11-10 22:42:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [55, 164, 592, 650, 737, 824, 891, 1133, 1574, 1723, 1785, 1828]} | {"Bitcoin": [18, 60]} | If You Believe In Bitcoin, You Should Never Buy Anything In Bitcoin | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/believe-bitcoin-never-buy-anything-224208387.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/Stephen Lam
A chain of block erupters used for Bitcoin mining is pictured at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, California, October 28, 2013.
Many Bitcoin believers think that the digital currency will one day become the pre-eminent currency of the internet. They basically see it becoming the internet's version of gold in that it's naturally scarce, independent, virtually impossible to manipulate, and crucially suited for a digital world when money ought to be able to be moved seamlessly and at no cost.
Well here's a tip: If you think that this is true, then never use Bitcoin in a transaction.
As more people have gotten into Bitcoin, the price has gone way up.
Virtually everyone who has ever bought anything in Bitcoin has been a huge loser, who would have been better suited just holding onto the Bitcoins instead.
Remember the pizza that was purchased for $25 in Bitcoins years back? Had the person not bought that pizza, it would be worth nearly $3 million. That purchase was a catastrophic decision, as that was probably the most expensive pizza of all time.
Of course this presents a Catch-22. How can Bitcoin become a real currency if it's not used in transactions? And why would anyone use it in transactions if becoming a real currency offers so much more price appreciation? This contradiction is a core problem, and it's a reason why it's probably doomed to fail (real currencies don't have this issue, since central banks prevent rapid price appreciation, and they mandate that the currency be used).
But really, if you're thinking that Bitcoin is going to be huge, it'd be insane and irresponsible to buy anything with it.
More From Business Insider
• Wall Street Analyst Explains Why Bitcoin Is Back From The Dead And Surging To All-Time Highs
• Bitcoin Is Going On An Astronomical Tear
• Bitcoin Is Going Totally Ballistic |
1,384,236,570 | 2013-11-12 06:09:30+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1261]} | {} | PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Nov 12 | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/press-digest-york-times-business-060930848.html | Reuters | http://www.reuters.com/ | Nov 12 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. * Some major health insurers are so worried about the Obama administration's ability to fix its troubled health care website that they are pushing the government to create a shortcut that would allow them to enroll people entitled to subsidies directly rather than through the federal system. () * The new video game consoles from Sony and Microsoft about to hit store shelves are almost certain to be hot holiday gifts this year. The uncertainty for the games business is: What happens after Santa leaves? Sales of a new generation of consoles could be dented by tablets, smartphones and Facebook, which offer games at lower prices. () * Sunday was a bad day for Fantex, the fledgling company promoting initial public offerings of National Football League stars, as its first two prospects were sidelined. () * Liquidators seeking to recover money for investors in two hedge funds filed a lawsuit on Monday against Standard & Poor's, Fitch and Moody's. () * A new trial expected to start this week will determine how much Samsung has to pay for an important suit it lost against Apple. () * Bitcoin's emergence has brought a field of competitors. Already, dozens of ideas are jockeying for the market. The online payment system viewed by many insiders as having the best chance of supplanting bitcoin is Ripple. Ripple holds out the promise not just of a new currency, but also of a novel method to send money around the world. () * The Justice Department's prosecution of SAC Capital Advisors raises the question of who the victims of a violation are. () * After several years of lackluster performance, the hedge fund industry is increasingly turning to self-help programs, sometimes referred to as "mindware" products, to try to improve its game. () * Several ideas about using financial instruments and a for-profit approach in the world of non-profits are now taking hold. () |
1,384,258,326 | 2013-11-12 12:12:06+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [4655]} | {} | China's Leadership Wants The Markets To Play A Bigger Role In The Economy | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-leadership-wants-markets-play-121206215.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
The Great Hall of the People, where the Chinese Communist Party plenum is being held, is seen behinds red flags in Tiananmen square in Beijing November 12, 2013.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's ruling party pledged to let markets play a "decisive" role in allocating resources as it unveiled a reform agenda for the next decade on Tuesday, looking to overhaul the world's second-largest economy to drive future growth.
China aims to achieve "decisive results" in its reform push by 2020, with economic changes a central focus of overall reforms, the ruling Communist Party said in a communiqué released by state media at the end of a four-day closed-door meeting of the party's 205-member Central Committee.
"The core issue is to straighten out the relationship between government and the market, allowing the market to play a decisive role in allocating resources and improving the government's role ," the party said in its statement.
It added that it would set up a central leading team for "comprehensively deepening reform," responsible for "designing reform on an overall basis, arranging and co-ordinating reform, pushing forward reform as a whole, and supervising the implementation of reform plans".
In previous policy statements, the Communist Party had often described markets as playing a "basic" role in allocating resources, Xinhua news agency said, meaning the new language amounts to an upgrading of its role in the party philosophy.
"They are looking to break away from government control, allowing the markets to take the lead. In the past, prices and investment decisions were predominantly made by the government," said Dong Tao, Asia ex-Japan chief regional economist with Credit Suisse in Hong Kong.
"This is a revolutionary philosophy, by Chinese standards."
CAUTIOUS ON STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES
Still, the party did not issue any bold reform plans for the country's state-owned enterprises (SOEs), saying that while both state firms and the private sector were important and it would encourage private enterprise, the dominance of the "public sector" in the economy would be maintained.
While the statement was short on details, it is expected to kick off specific measures by state agencies over the coming years to reduce the role of the state in the economy.
Historically, such third plenary sessions of a newly installed Central Committee have acted as a springboard for key economic reforms, and this one will also serve as a first test of the new leadership's commitment to reform.
Among the issues singled out for reform, the party said it would work to deepen fiscal and tax reform, establish a unified land market in cities and the countryside, set up a sustainable social security system, and give farmers more property rights - all seen as necessary for putting the world's second-largest economy on a more sustainable footing.
President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang must unleash new growth drivers as the economy, after three decades of breakneck expansion, begins to sputter, burdened by industrial overcapacity, piles of debt and eroding competitiveness.
Out of a long list of areas that the meeting was expected to tackle, most analysts have singled out a push towards a greater role of markets in the financial sector and reforms to public finances as those most likely to get immediate attention.
As part of that, Beijing is expected to push forward with capital account convertibility, and the 2020 target date for making significant strides on reform could set off expectations that the government will be looking to achieve breakthroughs on freeing up the closely managed yuan by then.
Few China watchers had expected Xi and Li to take on powerful state monopolies, judging that the political costs of doing so were just too high. Many economists argue that other reforms will have only limited success if the big state-owned firms' stranglehold on key markets and financing is not tackled.
But instead, the focus will be on indirect steps to limit the power of state behemoths and open up space for nimbler, private and foreign rivals - opening up key markets to private and foreign investment and deregulation tested in free trade zones.
Some reforms could face stiff resistance from powerful interest groups such as local governments or state-owned monopolies, people involved in reform discussions have said.
(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Writing by Jason Subler and Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Neil Fullick)
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1,384,261,200 | 2013-11-12 13:00:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [781, 1234, 1262, 1271, 1395, 1657, 1698, 1866]} | {"Bitcoin": [23, 82]} | Alix Announces Initial Bitcoin Mining Exploration Transaction / Implementation of Bitcoin Exchange | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alix-announces-initial-bitcoin-mining-130000977.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Nov. 12, 2013) -ALIX RESOURCES CORP. ("Alix" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:AIX)(FRANKFURT:37N) (ARXRF-US CLEARING SYMBOL)is pleased to announce that it has entered into an innovative and creative service plan with Ridge Resources Ltd. for upcoming exploratory work on its Windy Property located 15 kilometers north of Cassiar, British Columbia (see news release, November 7, 2013). Pursuant to the plan, Alix will pay Ridge for its services in bitcoins on an ongoing basis and will continue to explore this avenue for funding future endeavours with other service providers.
To explore this model of payment more fully with its other service providers, Alix has also entered into an agreement with a private software vendor to license a Bitcoin exchange to be administered by Alix. Management anticipates that the exchange will be launched in early January 2014.
President and CEO Michael England states, "The growth of popularity in the bitcoin space as an alternate method of payment has led Alix to step into this very exciting market. This transaction is the first of its kind within the Canadian junior mining sector and positions Alix as a participant at an early stage in the global Bitcoin marketplace."
About Bitcoin:
Bitcoin is a distributed, peer-to-peer digital currency that functions without the intermediation of any central authority. Bitcoin payment processing fees are substantially lower than those of credit cards or money transfers, and while the exchange rate is highly volatile, on average bitcoins have appreciated rapidly in relation to other currencies. Notable recent events include:
• Bitcoin market cap at an all time high
• Bitcoin price broke 52-week highs in recent weeks
• World's first bitcoin ATM recently unveiled in Vancouver, BC
For more information regarding bitcoin please visitwww.Bitcoin.org.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
Michael England, President
Forward-Looking Statement:
Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information that involves inherent risk and uncertainty affecting the business of Alix Resources Corp. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. |
1,384,261,560 | 2013-11-12 13:06:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [678, 1544, 2426, 3094]} | {} | Ripple Labs Announces $3.5 Million Investment Round | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ripple-labs-announces-3-5-130600163.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 12, 2013) -Ripple Labs, developer of theRippleprotocol, announced that it has secured $3.5 million in additional funding from Core Innovation Capital, Venture 51, Camp One Ventures, IDG Capital Partners, and a number of unnamed individuals. Ripple is a decentralized, open source payment protocol powering a new global value web.
Ripple Labs will use the new funds to continue building developer and consumer tools that enhance and contribute to the Ripple ecosystem. This latest investment build on previous rounds of seed funding from Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, IDG Capital Partners, FF Angel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, The Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, and Vast Ventures.
"Ripple removes friction from even the most basic of payment transactions, leveling the playing field for underserved individuals and emerging markets around the globe," said Arjan Schütte, founder and managing partner of Core Innovation Capital, a venture fund for FinTech companies serving the Emerging Middle Class. "We are investing in a veteran leadership team with a vision for using one of the most disruptive innovations in financial services to do good and empower individuals through financial inclusion."
Ripple enables fast, secure and nearly free transactions of any size, in any currency, around the world, with no chargebacks for merchants. As a distributed multi-currency exchange, Ripple pathways allow users to send money in one currency and receive it in another, including dollars, yen, euros or even Bitcoins. The Ripple payment system can be used for a wide range of applications, including merchant payments, money transfers, or remittances.
"Similar to the way in which email and other technologies drove the creation of a new global information web where anyone can communicate instantly and for free, Ripple is changing the way the world transacts with the first global value web," said Ripple Labs CEO Chris Larsen. "Ripple powers instant, affordable and secure transactions in any currency, making it as easy to move money as it is to send an email."
For more information about Ripple, please visithttp://www.ripple.com.
About Ripple Labs
Ripple Labs developed the Ripple protocol, which makes transacting as easy as emailing. The San Francisco-based startup is funded by Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, IDG Capital Partners, FF Angel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, The Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and Vast Ventures.
The software company's team of 30 is comprised of world-famous cryptographers, security experts, distributed network developers, Silicon Valley and Wall Street veterans. They contribute code to and promote the Ripple protocol, create SDKs and build free consumer apps. The team shepherds a movement to evolve finance so that payment systems are open, secure, constructive and globally inclusive.
About Ripple
Ripple is an open-source, distributed payment protocol. It enables free and instant payments to merchants, consumers and developers with no chargebacks and in any currency -- including dollars, yen, euros, and even Bitcoin. Ripple has the potential to transform payments to work like communications -- global, distributed, instant and free. Ripple is currently in beta. For more information about Ripple, please visithttp://www.ripple.com. |
1,384,275,146 | 2013-11-12 16:52:26+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [441]} | {"Bitcoin": [0]} | Bitcoin online exchange in Czech Republic hacked | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-online-exchange-czech-republic-165202215.html | Associated Press | https://apnews.com/ | PRAGUE (AP) -- An online exchange that trades the digital currency bitcoin in the Czech Republic says it has been attacked by hackers. The website Bitcash.cz says its security system was broken and bitcoins from its clients were stolen late Monday. It said in a statement Tuesday it has filed a legal complaint against the unknown hackers. It is not clear what amount of bitcoins disappeared and how many clients were affected by the theft. Bitcoin is a cryptography-based digital currency that advocates say is counterfeit-proof. Its price traded as high as $385 Tuesday afternoon. |
1,384,280,760 | 2013-11-12 18:26:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [179, 1119, 3485]} | {"Bitcoin": [18]} | Observations: Can Bitcoin Break Out? | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/observations-bitcoin-break-182600765.html | Moody's | https://www.moodys.com/ | Techies around the world were all atwitter last week—not just about Twitter's initial public offering, but also about a new record value of $395 for the digital currency bitcoin.
Bitcoin prices have spiked before. Earlier this year, the virtual currency hit a high of $230 after bank depositors in Cyprus were hit with taxes to bail out failing banks before crashing to $50. With one prominent blogger predicting last week that the value of a bitcoin could hit $1 million, the frenzy is starting to look like a modern-day tulip mania.
It's too soon to tell if the bitcoin is a passing technological fancy or could one day become a viable currency. So far the cyberscrip, which changes hands with no names attached, has been popular with techies, libertarians, and underworld types looking to elude governments.
Open-source sensation
Fueled by the cooperative spirit of the open-source computer movement, bitcoins took off after the 2008 financial crisis. The currency's creator, who uses the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, envisioned a means of exchange immune to the political or economic fortunes of any single country.
Bitcoins are backed neither by hard assets nor by governmental promises, like most conventional currencies. Buyers of bitcoins join a virtual network that collectively monitors itself. Each time a bitcoin is bought or sold, the transaction is added to a universal ledger, creating an audit trail visible to those on the network.
Here's the part techies love: Before a transaction can be recorded, a difficult math problem must be solved that requires pricey supercomputing time. The first programmer (a "miner" in bitcoin parlance) to answer the tricky question, which is essential to the validation process, broadcasts it to the other network members, who in turn verify it and post the bitcoin transaction. The winning team receives new bitcoins as a reward.
Monetary home brewing
However, this laborious, time-consuming process of confirming bitcoin's anonymous transactions—the ledger updates every 10 minutes—makes it unlikely that the virtual currency will ever be more than the monetary equivalent of home brewing: a niche hobby with limited mass appeal.
Currently, about 11.8 million bitcoin units exist in the virtual world, with a total value of $4.6 billion at the current dollar exchange rate. Trades take place online, and bitcoins are also accepted as payment by some online businesses such as the U.S. dating site OKCupid and the Chinese search engine Baidu.
Some adherents of the libertarian economic school see bitcoin as a realization of the belief that money can and should be managed by the private sector, rather than by governments as it is almost universally today. Most mainstream economists disagree: Chicago Fed economist François Velde recently called the bitcoin network an "automaton" that can't offer the stable store of value necessary for any successful currency.
China showing support
There's no doubt that bitcoin values are volatile, and thus ill-suited for ordinary commerce. Last week's spike in bitcoin prices is the latest twist in a lurid international tale featuring dealers in a range of black-market goods from drugs to body parts, with the FBI in pursuit.
Supporting players include the Chinese government, which has been promoting the digital currency on state-run TV. China renewed calls during last month's debt-ceiling standoff in Washington for nations to dethrone the dollar as the world's leading reserve currency. Bitcoin is hardly ready for reserve-currency status, but the Chinese support is telling.
The bitcoin thriller also includes a cameo appearance by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, famous as early investors in Facebook. The Winklevoss twins hold a bitcoin stake now worth about $46 million and have filed with the U.S. government to set up an exchange to trade the virtual currency. Cameron Winklevoss told a conference in New York Tuesday that he sees the capitalization of bitcoin hitting $400 billion.
Regulation looms
The most successful bitcoin exchange to date is called Mt. Gox, based in Japan. But Mt. Gox ran afoul of U.S. authorities for transmitting money without a license and had $5 million of its assets seized earlier this year. That forced Mt. Gox to temporarily suspend U.S. dollar withdrawals this summer, providing an opening for other bitcoin exchanges. Mt. Gox has since filed with the U.S. Treasury to formally become a currency exchange.
Regulatory issues aren't the only obstacle confronting bitcoin. Researchers at Cornell last week outlined a doomsday scenario under which a small group of programmers could take over the network and manipulate transactions to their own benefit. The researchers proposed a number of changes to bitcoin's operations to prevent such a takeover.
Even if those reforms aren't adopted, governments may force change. Last week's runup in the value of bitcoin was accompanied by reports from regional Fed banks predicting the cyberscrip will soon face increasing regulatory supervision. The U.S. Senate has also begun to ask how the government oversees virtual currencies.
This summer, Fed Chairwoman-designate Janet Yellen told a conference in Shanghai that bitcoin is subject to the same U.S. regulations as PayPal and other online payment systems. She may elaborate further during her Senate confirmation hearings Thursday.
Monica Gagnieris an Economics Writer at Moody's Analytics.More from Dismal Scientist:
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1,384,350,605 | 2013-11-13 13:50:05+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [594]} | {} | Analyst predicts 2014 A7 Apple TV, future in set-top boxes | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analyst-predicts-2014-a7-apple-135005186.html | Gigaom | http://gigaom.com/ | This year has seen many product refreshes for Apple (a aapl) — including the super high-end Mac Pro — but the Apple TV system has been suspiciously absent from the proceedings. But it’s coming soon, if an analyst reportspotlighted by 9to5Macis on target. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts that in 2014, Apple TV will use an A7 chip, but that the long-term goal is a set-top box in 2015 or 2016. Both products are reasonably predictable — the A7 upgrade is an easy one to make, and Apple already has patents for a set-top box in place — so it’s worth keeping in mind.
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1,384,358,395 | 2013-11-13 15:59:55+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1971]} | {} | The Messy, Messy Relationship Between Income (and Race) and Obesity | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/messy-messy-relationship-between-income-155955371.html | The Atlantic | http://www.theatlantic.com/ | The irony of obesity is that, according to conventional wisdom, it's a disease for poor people in rich countries.Around the world, the countries with the highest estimated obesity rates include the U.S., the UK, Australia, Canada, Finland, Argentina, Chile and Mexico—except for the last two, all wealthy countries with GDP per capita above $30,000.
But within the U.S., the relationship between obesity and income is more complicated, according to a newPew Research Survey.
Pew looked at obesity rates by race along three earnings groups—130% of the poverty level; 130%-349% of poverty level; more than 350% of poverty level (poverty calculationshere). Here are the results...
Poorer women are the most likely to be obese among all ethnicities. But there are a few counter-intuitive surprises here. The richest men were, overall, more likely to be obese than the poorest groups. The groups with the lowest rates of obesity were rich white women and poor black men. Obesityriseswith income for black and Hispanic men, but itfallswith income for black and Hispanic women. The relationship is clearly more complicated than "a disease for poor people in a rich country."
As the House pushes a bill to cut food stamps by $40 billion, there's been greater attention paid to the relationship between food stamps, poverty, and obesity. The debate can be crudely summed up as: Are we paying poor people to become obese. The evidence suggests the answer is no. "There’sno clear evidencethatfood stampscontribute to obesity for most of the program's participants," Olga Kazanwrote, and a 2008 U.S. Department of Agriculture'sreviewfound that food stamps didn't increase obesity among children or men, butadult womenare "2 to 5 percent more likely to become obese if they received food stamps for more than a year."
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1,332,444,236 | 2012-03-22 19:23:56+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [554, 692, 968, 1049, 2029, 2182, 2301, 2360]} | {"Bitcoin": [56]} | Should Africa Adopt a Shared Currency? And Should It Be Bitcoin? | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/africa-adopt-shared-currency-bitcoin-192356678.html | The Atlantic | http://www.theatlantic.com/ | Dekstop/Flickr
Iwrote on Mondayabout Sweden's move toward an ever-more-cashless society: The country is pointing the way -- with other European and North American countries following its lead -- toward ever-more-digital financial transactions.
Rüdiger Koch, a German software developer, wants to expand the cash-reduction trend to Africa. But he wants to take things a step further, too: Koch -- who is also a consultant to the bitcoin exchangeIntersango-- argues that Africa should adopt aeuro-style shared currency. And thatthat currency should be the Bitcoin.
AnarticleinTechnology Reviewexplores the validity of Kock's arguments. "In the United States and Europe," Tom Simonite reports, "Bitcoin's meteoric rise was mostly driven by speculators; hardly anyone used the currency to actually pay for goods and services." The currency's exchange value has plummeted -- from $30 last summer to around $5 right now. In February, Tradehill -- the largest exchange where Bitcoins could be traded for dollars --closed, citing "increasing regulation."
A Bitcoin economy might have better luck in Africa, though, Koch argues. The countries of Africa, after all, tend to differ from the U.S. and those of Europe in two significant ways: First, their centralized banking systems are (generally) weak. Despite quick growth in nations like Kenya and Nigeria, cash transactions are still standard -- "particularly," Simonite notes, "in rural areas where there are no ATMs and few people have bank accounts."
Second, mobile phones are on the rise in Africa. The number of mobile subscribershas grown almost 20 percentyear-over-year for the past five years, theGSM Associationreports, leading to expectations thatthere will be more than 735 million subscriberson the African continent by the end of 2012. "It may seem unlikely, given its track record in technological development," The Guardian's Killian Foxwrote last year, "but Africa is at the center of a mobile revolution."
So people are already carrying the tools that could facilitate Bitcoin-based exchanges, Koch notes. From there -- and particularly as prices for the phones that use Google's Android software continue to drop -- "the Bitcoin community," Koch argues, could create open-source technology that builds on mobile operating systems to create Bitcoin-based apps. Koch imagines "a design similar to the Bitcoin for Android app, which allows one person to transfer bitcoins to another by using a phone to snap a photo of a 2D bar code or QR code on the screen of another phone" -- creating a society and an economy in which "people could exchange money when they meet on the street."
Or, well, "money."
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1,384,376,940 | 2013-11-13 21:09:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [181, 368, 411, 826, 944]} | {"Bitcoin": [37]} | Here's Why The Winklevoss Twins LOVE Bitcoin | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-why-winklevoss-twins-love-210918757.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Michael Seto
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, famous for rattling legal sabers against Facebook, garnered some attention whenthey claimed to own 1% of all Bitcoins, the anonymous digital currency, earlier this year.
Speaking to Business Insider's executive editor Joe Weisenthal at IGNITION 2013, the twins laid out the reasons why they love Bitcoin.
In response to the criticism that Bitcoin is purely speculative, either Cameron or Tyler (we didn't catch which one) said that " people speculate in dollars too. This idea that people aren't betting when they hang on to a dollar is incorrect."
They also love the currency's transparency, explaining that "there is nothing predictable or transparent about the US dollar. No one has any idea what the Federal Reserve's going to do, how they operate."
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is fixed at 21 million coins that will come out incrementally and predictably over time.
"Bitcoin brings the promise of email to the finance sector. Now it's instant and effectively free to send money anywhere," the twins said.
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1,384,376,940 | 2013-11-13 21:09:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [181, 368, 411, 826, 944]} | {"Bitcoin": [37]} | Here's Why The Winklevoss Twins LOVE Bitcoin | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-why-winklevoss-twins-love-210918757.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Michael Seto
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, famous for rattling legal sabers against Facebook, garnered some attention whenthey claimed to own 1% of all Bitcoins, the anonymous digital currency, earlier this year.
Speaking to Business Insider's executive editor Joe Weisenthal at IGNITION 2013, the twins laid out the reasons why they love Bitcoin.
In response to the criticism that Bitcoin is purely speculative, either Cameron or Tyler (we didn't catch which one) said that " people speculate in dollars too. This idea that people aren't betting when they hang on to a dollar is incorrect."
They also love the currency's transparency, explaining that "there is nothing predictable or transparent about the US dollar. No one has any idea what the Federal Reserve's going to do, how they operate."
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is fixed at 21 million coins that will come out incrementally and predictably over time.
"Bitcoin brings the promise of email to the finance sector. Now it's instant and effectively free to send money anywhere," the twins said.
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1,384,437,634 | 2013-11-14 14:00:34+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [219, 1877, 2151]} | {"Bitcoin": [24]} | Alix Provides Update on Bitcoin Exchange and Golden Zone Property | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alix-provides-bitcoin-exchange-golden-140034067.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Nov 14, 2013) -ALIX RESOURCES CORP. ("Alix" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:AIX)(FRANKFURT:37N) (ARXRF-US CLEARING SYMBOL)is pleased to provide an update regarding its planned Bitcoin exchange launch anticipated in Q1 2014 (see news release, November 12, 2013). Completion of the advanced platform is anticipated shortly with a beta version to begin real time testing in December 2013. With bitcoin usage recently exceeding all-time highs, Alix will provide users with a secure, reliable and powerful trading platform to the Canadian bitcoin market.
Alix is also pleased to announce it has incurred sufficient expenditures to earn 51% of the Golden Zone gold property, located in the Chulitna mineral belt of Alaska. A NI43-101 resource estimate for the Golden Zone property reports 10,264,327 tonnes (11,294,000 tons) of measured, indicated and inferred material averaging 1.44 g/T Au and containing 431,389 ounces of gold, 2,214,517 ounces of silver and 6,081 tonnes (6,689 ton; 13,378,000 lbs) of copper (see news release, January 5th2012).
Michael England, CEO & Director states, "This is a very exciting time for Alix, both with having earned 51% of Golden Zone and also with the fast approaching launch of our bitcoin exchange. While mineral exploration continues to be our main focus, we are confident that increasing shareholder value and financing our projects will be possible through the bitcoin exchange."
There are currently two bitcoin exchanges in Canada. Alix will join this competitive market and is confident in utilizing the following principles to create a valuable product for its users.
• Security
The exchange will utilize industry standard practices such as DDOS protection, cold storage & two-factor authentication to ensure that all exchange activity and information is well secured.
• Over-Compliance
While Bitcoin is not heavily regulated in Canada, Alix plans to take a proactive approach to ensure all regulatory and financial requirements are met. Coming from the public sector, Alix is already very familiar with strict compliance requirements.
For more information regarding Bitcoin & Alix's involvement, please visit:www.AlixResources.com/bitcoin
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
Michael England, President
Forward-Looking Statement:
Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information that involves inherent risk and uncertainty affecting the business of Alix Resources Corp. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. |
1,384,491,660 | 2013-11-15 05:01:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [15, 69, 181, 269, 462, 542, 602, 800, 866, 917, 1285, 1319, 1697, 1831, 1983]} | {"Bitcoin": [18, 51]} | Buy Anything With Bitcoin Anywhere Online With New Bitcoin Proxy Buying Service Bitsumo | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/buy-anything-bitcoin-anywhere-online-050100449.html | null | https://guce.yahoo.com/terms?locale=en-US | Anyone can use Bitcoin to buy anything online with recently launched Bitcoin service Bitsumo.com.
November 3rd, 2013 /MarketersMedia/ -- In early 2013Bitsumo.comwas launched; a new Bitcoin proxy buying service which enables anyone worldwide to buy anything online with Bitcoin. Bitsumo imposes no restrictions on the order value, or quantity and they work 24/7 guaranteeing to process all orders within 24 hours. The Bitsumo platform acts as a middleman between Bitcoiners and online merchants worldwide. Using Bitsumo`s service instead of a Bitcoin exchange to purchase goods and services online with Bitcoin has a number of key benefits: no additional risk for users, no waiting for transactions, no banking fees, no extra paper work and no loss in purchasing power. With the recent surging of the Bitcoin to USD exchange rate Bitsumo is a welcome addition to the Bitcoin ecosystem; enabling consumers to use their Bitcoin to buy anything online worldwide.
The purchasing process forBitsumo users has been designed by the team to be as easy for the end user as possible. The customer submits an order and Bitsumo calculates the total price including fees and shipping. Bitsumo then sends the buyer a BitPay payment link: the user then enters their shipping information and sends the Bitcoin payment to the designated Bitcoin wallet address. Bitsumo then purchases the item on behalf of the user with the customer`s shipping information, and sends the customer their receipt and tracking number. With Bitsumo`s 24 hour order processing guarantee and the 24/7 availability of their staff, the platform`s dedication to their customers` needs is obvious.
Concurrent with the rapid value increase of Bitcoin over the last two weeks many innovative new services are appearing to serve the community. Bitsumo is one such platform. With Bitcoin showing no signs of slowing, a service as dedicated to serving its customers as much as Bitsumo no doubt has a big role to play in the thriving Bitcoin ecosystem of the future.
Visithttps://bitsumo.com/for more information.
Contact InfoName: Bitsumo SupportEmail: support@bitsumo.com
###This announcement is sourced from MarketersMedia[Link].
This announcement is distributed by Thomson Reuters on behalf of Thomson Reuters clients.The owner of this announcement warrants that:(i) the releases contained herein are protected by copyright and other applicable laws; and(ii) they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of theinformation contained therein.Source: MarketersMedia via Thomson Reuters ONEHUG#1743468 |
1,384,538,400 | 2013-11-15 18:00:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [115, 600, 970, 1131, 1324, 1646, 1971, 2381, 2944]} | {"Bitcoin": [38, 93]} | KnCMiner Sells $3M of Top-of-the-Line Bitcoin Digital Mining Machines in Record Four Days of Bitcoin Trading Frenzy | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kncminer-sells-3m-top-line-180000309.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN--(Marketwired - Nov 15, 2013) - KnCMiner (www.KnCMiner.com/), a manufacturer of state-of-the-art Bitcoin mining machines, today disclosed that active orders and pre-orders for its Saturn and Jupiter rigs are now officially sold out, with demand meeting the company's initially scheduled production of 5,000 units. KnCMiner's sales were capped by a frenetic period of sales in just four days -- from Nov. 7 to 10, 2013 -- during which the company accepted $3 million in orders for all of its November supply. Over the same period of time, the value of popular digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin saw an increase by nearly 27 percent, from $264 USD to $336 USD, while reaching a peak value of $395 and trading volume of 14,000 over that time.
"While we have seen a significant increase in demand for our line of machines from the last quarter to this one, what happened in the last four days has been unprecedented for us, maybe unprecedented anywhere in the Bitcoin mining industry. In four short days, we pushed $3 million of equipment out the door," said KnCMiner CEO Andreas Kennemar. "The increased activity around Bitcoin in just half a week undoubtedly had a sizable impact on our sales. We're now focusing on doing everything we can to meet the demand we expect we will continue to receive, especially as Bitcoin's popularity continues to soar."
Subsequent to selling out its production supply for November in just a matter of days, KnCMiner also sold out a $600,000 supply of upgrade modules inunderfive minutesto existing customers who already have rigs. KnCMiner has produced almost $29 million in total global sales of its Bitcoin mining rigs to 120 different countries in the company's seven short months of existence since April 2013, rapidly going from market entry to market leader. The company will soon begin taking pre-orders again to meet this historic demand by miners who are participating in the new "digital gold rush."
KnCMiner offers Bitcoin mining hardware that is faster and more efficient at producing the virtual cryptocurrency, at competitive prices, while keeping energy costs lower and mining areas cooler. KnCMiner has partnered with the biggest names in supercomputing, including a recent partnership with Alchip Technologies, to deliver rigs that can hash faster and more efficiently than any others on the market. KnCMiner's line of Bitcoin speciality machines, including the popular Jupiter and Saturn models, contain proprietary technology with custom-engineered ASIC that provide the highest production performance on the market with energy-saving features that are unique to the product line.
For more details about KnCMiner, and specific lines of machines such as the Jupiter and Saturn, please visitwww.KnCMiner.com.
About KnCMinerKnCMiner is a Swedish company founded in 2013 as a joint venture between ORSoC AB and Kennemar & Cole AB. KnCMiner produces a popular line of machines to help Bitcoin producers mine the digital cryptocurrency more effectively and more efficiently at overall lower cost. For more information, please visitwww.KnCMiner.com. |
1,384,552,800 | 2013-11-15 22:00:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [339, 688, 1030, 1045, 2092, 2128, 2233, 2507, 2885, 3003, 3136, 3285, 3363, 3421, 3548, 4168, 4476, 4614, 4778]} | {} | Battle of the Beasties | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/battle-beasties-220000558.html | Morningstar | http://www.morningstar.com/ | The FinalistsYesterday, Morningstar's researchers debated which fund had the most intimidating discussion of risk factors in its prospectus. They realized almost immediately that the winner would be an exchange-traded fund, as, try as they might, conventional mutual funds can't match ETFs for bizarre.
Their two finalists were Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust and ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (UVXY).
It's an inspired duo. I'll go one step further. These are the industry's strangest funds, period. Not just for their risk factors, but also for their investment complexity and for the wackiness of their performance.
Investment ComplexityBoth funds score stunningly well here.
The Bitcoin Trust holds "a digital commodity based on an open source cryptographic protocol existing on the online, end-user-to-end-user network hosting the public transaction ledger, known as the 'Blockchain,' and the source code comprising the basis for the cryptographic and algorithmic protocols governing the issuance of and transactions in Bitcoins (the 'Bitcoin Network')."
For its part, the ProShares fund seeks to double the daily performance of an index that indirectly measures the collective expectation for the level of stock-market volatility over the next month. Per Wikipedia, VIX "is calculated as the square root of the par variance swap for a 30-day term initiated today. Note that the VIC is the volatility of a variance swap and not that of a volatility swap." Noted.
There you have it. Two funds, each as natural as Donald Trump's hair and about as complicated. One fund rises and falls based upon the value of a currency that is supported neither by a tangible asset nor an entity that can raise revenue, and the other rises twice and falls twice based on the performance of an index that was built by mathematicians. A derivative of a derivative, versus a derivative of a derivative of a derivative.
Verdict: Narrow victory for ProShares. The ProShares fund goes one derivative further, and it's leveraged at that. Although for fancy math, its "kernel-smoothed estimator" can't touch Bitcoin's code creators.
PerformanceBitcoins' spot price over the trailing 12 months:
The total return of the ProShares fund:
Verdict: Draw. Bitcoin prices are up well over 1,000% for the period, including a week with a 65% loss. Impressive. The 93% decline suffered by the ProShares fund is just as good, however. For this competition, riches to rags counts the same as rags to riches.
ProspectusTwo tree-killers. Bitcoin ETF's prospectus numbers 95 pages. The ProShares fund's prospectus is even longer, at 138 pages, as it shares the territory with a nonleveraged version of the VIX index fund. (I attempted to print the full prospectuses from each fund, but near the end of the ProShares job, after 40 minutes of laboring, the printer froze in protest.)
Discussion of risk factors for the Bitcoin Trust runs 18 pages. Included is the following:
The loss or destruction of a private key required to access a Bitcoin may be irreversible. The Trust's loss of access to its private keys or its experience of a data loss relating to the Trust's Bitcoins could adversely affect an investment in the Shares.
If a malicious actor or botnet obtains control in excess of the processing power on the Bitcoin Network, such actor or botnet could manipulate the source code of the Bitcoin Network or the Blockchain …
The acceptance of the Bitcoin Network software patches or upgrades by a significant, but not overwhelming, percentage of the users and miners in the Bitcoin Network could result in a fork in the Blockchain, resulting in the operation of two separate networks until such time as the forked Blockchains are merged.
ProShares once again wins the paper battle, checking in with a 22-page risk disclosure. But can it beat the botnets?
Due to the compounding of daily returns, the Geared Fund's returns over periods longer than a single day will likely differ in amount and possibly even direction from the two times (2x) the index return for the period
The use of leveraged positions could result in the total loss of an investor's investment.
Verdict: Decisive victory for Bitcoin. Having an index fund that might go to zero, and that can move in the opposite of its intended direction, is a brilliant accomplishment for ProShares. Full credit for crazy. However, that disclosure is sadly standard, holding true of many other leveraged daily ETFS as well. Whereas the kookiness of Bitcoin's ETF is a special sort of kookiness.
A narrow loss, a draw, and a decisive victory in the three equal-weighted sections make the Bitcoin Trust the overall winner. Before conducting this exercise, I had thought that I might need the Winklevoss connection to break a tie, but not so. Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust wins the award as the fund industry's nuttiest fund even without help from its parents.
Completing the StoryFrom a fund-industry trade publication about outflows from domestic large-growth stock funds*, even as stock fund sales overall are booming:
* The article says "large-cap" but the author must mean "large-growth," because that's in the headline and because domestic large-blend and large-value funds have positive net sales.
What could help domestic large-cap funds bounce back with higher flows is to sustain good performance, according to [Lipper Analytic's Jeff] Tjornehoj. He points out that year-to-date, domestic large-cap funds have a 24.5% return, which is only a handful of percentage points off the 29.5% that small-caps have gained for the year.
Tjornehoj notes that investors' wariness of domestic large-caps grew after the strategies had been marketed as products that could hedge against wild market swings, but then got hit just as hard as small-cap funds during the financial crisis. He adds that the fund industry also began pushing retail alternatives and bonds, causing investors to move away from domestic products in general.
"Investors can have long memories and [the financial crisis] occurred at a very challenging time," Tjornehoj says. "The retirement for the first wave of baby boomers was coming up and their portfolios got crushed."
True enough, in its way. Also true, however, is that of the category's $19 billion in outflows this year, $12 billion have come from a single fund, American Funds Growth Fund of America (AGTHX). In addition, $5 billion has gone into large-growth ETFs. So, aside from the redemptions that are occurring at Capital Research, and including ETFs, category sales are about flat for the year. Still disappointing given the rebound in stock fund sales, but better than portrayed.
John Rekenthaler has been researching the fund industry since 1988. He is now a columnist for Morningstar.com and a member of Morningstar's investment research department. John is quick to point out that while Morningstar typically agrees with the views of the Rekenthaler Report, his views are his own. |
1,384,560,797 | 2013-11-16 00:13:17+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1348]} | {} | UK investigates huge spam attack on bank customers' computers | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/uk-investigates-huge-spam-attack-001317100.html | Reuters | https://www.reuters.com/ | REUTERS - Cybercrime investigators are looking into a barrage of spam sent to millions of British banking customers designed to freeze their computers and demand a ransom, Britain's National Crime Agency said on Friday. The agency, which began operating only last month, said its National Cyber Crime Unit had become "aware of a mass email spamming event which is ongoing, where people are receiving emails that appear to be from banks and other financial institutions." The agency said it considered the attack a "significant risk." It added that while the spam emails may be sent out to "tens of millions of UK customers," they appear to be targeted mainly at small and medium-sized businesses. The spam carries an attachment that appears to be correspondence related to the text of the email - such as a voice mail or fax or details of a purported suspicious transaction or invoice seeking payment, the agency said. In reality, the agency said, the attachment injects a malicious program - malware - into the computer, which opens it as well as the local network to which the machine is connected. Once triggered, a program called "Cryptolocker" that the crime agency described as "ransomware," proceeds to encrypt the files on the user's machine and the local network. Once encrypted, the computer displays a message demanding the payment of 2 Bitcoins - an electronic currency currently worth 536 pounds, or about $865 - in return for the key to unlock the encryption. The UK crime agency said it advised users not to pay the ransom and warned that even if it were paid, there was no guarantee the encryption key would be turned over. The spam attack was reported just as UK financial institutions were conducting a large-scale cybersecurity exercise, code-named "Walking Shark 2," The exercise was being coordinated by the British Treasury and the Bank of England. (Reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney) |
1,384,695,480 | 2013-11-17 13:38:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [66, 173, 194, 238, 421, 510, 572, 916, 1060, 1106, 1150, 1259, 1508, 1594, 1668, 1964, 2226, 2347, 2426, 2467, 2579, 2652, 3136, 3377, 3845, 3894, 3934, 4050, 4107, 4410, 4619, 4709, 4887, 4927, 5522, 5571, 5777, 5822, 5877], "BTC": [2529, 2706]} | {"Bitcoin": [3, 55]} | If Bitcoin Is So Secure, Why Have There Been Dozens of Bitcoin Bank Robberies And Millions In Losses? | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-secure-why-dozens-bitcoin-133850174.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Michael Karshis / Flickr, CC
One of the most powerful myths about Bitcoin — the encrypted, independent online currency that's become a huge trend in recent months — is that Bitcoin is "secure."
Bitcoin.org, the semi-official voice of the Bitcoin community, says "the whole system is protected by heavily peer-reviewed cryptographic algorithms like those used for online banking. No organization or individual can control Bitcoin, andthe network remains secure even if not all of its users can be trusted."
But Bitcoin is not secure.
There have been dozens of robberies of Bitcoin banks and exchanges, and millions of dollars have been lost.
To put that in perspective, if robbers were routinely walking into brick-and-mortar banks and taking millions of dollars, with zero consequences and no arrests, it would make huge headlines every day. The media would be on high alert for the next heist.
But on the Internet, Bitcoin thefts worth hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars happen on a weekly basis and no one cares.
Here are a few recent examples of Bitcoin robberies, and then we'll explain why Bitcoin is not 100% "secure."
• The Chinese BitcoinGBL went offline earlier this month, taking $4.1 million in users' accounts with it.
• In Australia, aBitcoin exchange run by an 18-year-old user named "Tradefortress,"claims to have lost $1 million of his users' money.
• Also in November, a Czech exchange,Bitcash.cz, declared that hackers had made offwith an undisclosed amount stored in its users' Bitcoin wallets.
• In September,Bitfloor announced that it had lost $250,000in hacked Bitcoins.
• Last year$228,845 was stolen from a trading platform known as Bitcoinica.
YouTube / Renee Pinnell
Ross Ulbricht
Perhaps the biggest heist was pulled off by the U.S. government. After Ross Ulbricht, the alleged "Dread Pirate Roberts" who ran the online drugs market Silk Road was arrested by the FBI, authorities reported they hadseized nearly $29 million in Bitcoinscontrolled by him. Techdirt later noted thatsome of the money may have belonged to users who did business on his site, and not all the business transacted there was illegal.
Don't hold you breath for refunds.
Here's a website devoted to listing dozens ofBitcoin robberies through 2012. In 2011, Ars Technica reported on this description ofwhat it is like to be the victim of Bitcoin theft:
The user known as "allinvain" is a long-time contributor to the Bitcoin forums. He says he's been mining Bitcoins for over a year, and had amassed a fortune of 25,000 BTC. This was a modest sum a few months ago, when Bitcoins were worth pennies, but over the last two months the value of a Bitcoin skyrocketed to around $20, which means 25,000 BTC would have been worth half a million dollars. "I remember watching the price like a hawk," he wrote.
And then disaster struck. "I just woke up to see a very large chunk of my bitcoin balance gone," he wrote. "Needles [sic] to say I feel like I have lost faith in bitcoin." He speculated that a Windows security flaw may have allowed the culprit to gain access to his digital wallet. "I feel like killing myself now," he said.
Bitcoin is vulnerable in the same way any other online asset is vulnerable: Passwords can be stolen or guessed, accounts can be hacked. Most of the thefts involve hacking into users' accounts.Bitfloor's description of how it lost $250,000in Bitcoin is typical. A hacker found an unencrypted copy of the coded keys to users' wallets:
Last night, a few of our servers were compromised. As a result, the attacker gained accesses to an unencrypted backup of the wallet keys (the actual keys live in an encrypted area). Using these keys they were able to transfer the coins. This attack took the vast majority of the coins BitFloor was holding on hand. As a result, I have paused all exchange operations.
In fact, Bitcoin defenders say this is exactly the point. Bitcoin isn't insecure — you are!
Here'sBitcoin.org's answer to that very question on security:
Although these events are unfortunate, none of them involve Bitcoin itself being hacked, nor imply inherent flaws in Bitcoin; just like a bank robbery doesn't mean that the dollar is compromised. However, it is accurate to say that a complete set of good practices and intuitive security solutions is needed to give users better protection of their money, and to reduce the general risk of theft and loss.
The idea that Bitcoin is "secure" even though it can be stolen is a bit like saying that gold is "secure," even if it is being spirited away by gangsters. They can'tdestroythe gold, after all.
What they really mean is that Bitcoins themselves cannot be copied or faked, like counterfeit bills. Anyone receiving a Bitcoin can be confident that it is real and valuable.
Loco Steve / Flickr, CC
But that aspect of its security — the permanence of the value in the transaction — turns out to be Bitcoin's biggest security flaw. Once a Bitcoin transaction has been approved by both sides, it cannot be reversed without the permission of the receipient. So when hackers engineer the transaction, the cash is gone forever.
That'snotwhat happens with traditional currency. In the U.S., if your bank is robbed or even if the bank goes out of business, the FDIC backs up the lost deposits and replaces your money,up to $250,000 per bank.
And then there isthis new theory from Cornell Universitywhich posits that there is an incentive in the system for users to cooperate and hoard their coins until they control a majority of available Bitcoins. At that point, the currency collapses.
Bitcoin is only as "secure" as the fallible, ill-intentioned users who open accounts, create passwords and covet their fellows' wallets.
Which is to say, not especially secure.
More From Business Insider
• Bitcoin Hits $600
• Here's The Argument That Bitcoin Is Collapsing Before Our Very Eyes
• BERNANKE: Bitcoin 'May Hold Long-Term Promise' |
1,384,788,900 | 2013-11-18 15:35:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [11, 283, 543, 724, 2371, 2455, 2465]} | {"Bitcoin": [25]} | Here's The Argument That Bitcoin Is Collapsing Before Our Very Eyes | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-argument-bitcoin-collapsing-very-153531558.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Clarkmoody
Bitcoin is surging day after day, and believers in the virtual currency are feeling a sense of increasing vindication.
Further cementing the meme that bitcoins are becoming "for real" are today's hearings in the Senate about their use.
But maybe instead of becoming real, Bitcoin is collapsing before our very eyes.
That's the provocative thesisput forth by Izabella Kaminska of FT Alphaville.
When she looks at the above, she doesn't see mass adoption: She sees a gigantic short-squeeze caused by a state of crisis in the world of Bitcoin.
Among her points:
• The price started surging after the Silk Road bust, and a number of bitcoins went dark, creating an extreme shortage and a challenge for anyone who had Bitcoin liabilities.
• There's been arash of bitcoin thefts.
• There's been a computer virus spreading, demanding people fork over bitcoins.
• And finally she adds, there's been some major breakthroughs this year in the "mining" of bitcoins (bitcoins are mined by setting your computer to solve math problems), which has crushed the margins for traditional miners, pushing them out of the market.
All of this creates a situation where the traditional players in the market are totally scrambling to either buy obtain bitcoins (because of the shortage) or have been pushed out of mining.
On this last point, she writes:
To keep conventional miners incentivised to stay in the mining operation — at least until everyone transfers to the new technology — the price has to go up instead. However, as the chart above shows, prices are not yet high enough to keep conventional miners in the game. The consequences of that, we would imagine, are that the mining peer network may have been greatly reduced, creating something of a cartel-like effect, due to the lack of competition.
The super spike suggests the market is now evolving to somehow attract back conventional miners so as to defend the decentralised market from the destablising effects of miner concentration — more easily done now that there is a supply deficit which is potentially choking the system. This can only be done, however, with higher prices and/or the roll-out of the new technology.
Kaminska is one of the smartest thinkers in the game on this stuff.Go read her full post, and then read all of the other posts she's written about the subject.
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• The Bitcoin Insanity Continues — Prices Top $450
• New York Will Be Holding Hearings On Bitcoin
• Bitcoin Prices Are Going Insane |
1,384,795,200 | 2013-11-18 17:20:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1663]} | {} | Marmots on a Plane and Other Intriguing Things | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/marmots-plane-other-intriguing-things-172000158.html | The Atlantic | http://www.theatlantic.com/ | 1.NASA launches theMars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission today.
"Mars is a complicated system, just as complicated as the Earth in its own way. You can't hope, with a single spacecraft, to study all aspects and to learn everything there is to know about it. With MAVEN, we're exploring the single biggest unexplored piece of Mars so far."
2.IBM's call center research and optimization services.
"This text-analysis tool takes information from call center agent records, identifies customer concerns, provides early warning capabilities and mines data for trends and patterns."
3.The strange dilemmas posed by emotional support animals for nervous airplane passengers.
"Delta says it allows rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, birds and marmots."
4.On OutKast's southern futurism.
"Rap had seen afro-futurist eccentrics before, but since hard-core hit in ’94, no one but Kool Keith had dressed so flamboyantly... Andre had reached that rarefied level of 'I don't give a fuck' that Kanye West has frantically sought since his first Givenchy kilt. His clothes weren’t a bug-out costume or artistic pose; they felt as creatively surreal as the music. No one on earth or Alpha Centauri could have convincingly pulled them off."
5.To understand Apple's success, think about the pace of the under-the-hood optimizations they've made in the iPad Mini.
"Just one year ago, those were the compromises Apple was forced to make. They could shrink the year old iPad 2 into the Mini form factor, or go retina and A6X with a thicker and heavier battery. This year, there are no compromises, there is noor."
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1,384,795,200 | 2013-11-18 17:20:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [45, 162, 5123, 5133]} | {"Bitcoin": [10]} | BERNANKE: Bitcoin 'May Hold Long-Term Promise' | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bernanke-bitcoin-may-hold-long-172034587.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/ Tim Chong
The beautiful thing about Bitcoin, digital currency enthusiasts will tell you, is that it doesn't have a central bank.
So with eyes on today's Bitcoin Senate hearing, where does the world's most powerful central banker stand on the elusive cryptocurrency?
Now we know. Ahead of the meeting, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernankehas released a letterto help guide the senate . Quartz's Zachary Seward called it a "cautious blessing," with Bernanke acknowledging the Fed doesn't have the authority to supervise virtual currencies, but that they " may hold long-term promise, particularly if the innovations promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system.”
Here's Bernanke'sfull letter(via Quartz):
Dear Senators:Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding virtual currencies. As you noted, virtual currencies have been receiving increased attention from U.S. authorities over the past several months.
Historically, virtual currencies have been viewed as a form of “electronic money” or area of payment system technology that has been evolving over the past 20 years. Over time, these types of innovations have received attention from Congress as well as U.S. regulators. For example, in 1995, the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings on “the future of money” at which early versions of virtual currencies and other innovations were discussed. Vice Chairman Alan Blinder’s testimony at that time made the key point that while these types of innovations may pose risks related to law enforcement and supervisory matters, there are also areas in which they may hold long-term promise, particularly if the innovations promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system.
Although the Federal Reserve generally monitors developments in virtual currencies and other payments system innovations, it does not necessarily have authority to directly supervise or regulate these innovations or the entities that provide them to the market. In general, the Federal Reserve would only have authority to regulate a virtual currency product if it is issued by, or cleared or settled through, a banking organization that we supervise. Given the Federal Reserve”s authority and the manner in which virtual currencies have developed, the Federal Reserve has focused primarily on a supervised banking organization’s role in the products’ sale and distribution, as well as the applicable regulations, such as Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) /anti-money laundering (AML) requirements.
Policies, Procedures, Guidance or Advisories
In March 2013, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued guidance to clarify that an administrator or exchanger of virtual currency is generally considered a money transmitter under definitions and therefore subject to BSA requirements?’ The Federal Reserve’s supervisory expectations and guidance related to compliance for bank transactions using virtual currencies have been incorporated into the Electronic Cash section of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) Examination Manual. The overall objective of the guidance and examination procedures provided in this section is to assess the adequacy of a bank’s systems to manage the risks associated with electronic cash and management’s ability to implement effective monitoring and reporting systems. The section further lists applicable risk factors and risk mitigation steps for banks to consider. The Federal Reserve supervision staff has on–going initiatives with the FFIEC member agencies to identify additional areas of concern that require heightened attention by the banking organizations we supervise.
Ongoing Coordination
In May 2013, the US. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) named Liberty Reserve S.A. as a financial institution of primary money laundering concern under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Section 31l).4 ‘According to the announcement, Liberty Reserve, a web–based money transfer system or “virtual currency,” was specifically designed and frequently used to facilitate money laundering in cyber space. This action also marked the first use of Section 311 authorities against a virtual currency provider.
The statutory language of Section 311 requires Treasury to consult with the Federal Reserve Board when these special measures are being developed and proposed. Therefore, Federal Reserve Board staff participated in coordination and consultation efforts leading up to the designation of the virtual currency provider, Liberty Reserve, under Section 311.
Specific Plans or Strategies
As noted above, the Federal Reserve plans to work with other FFIEC member agencies on electronic cash and related issues such as virtual currencies, as needed, for banking organizations. The Federal Reserve will continue to monitor developments as part of its broad interest in the safety and efficiency of the payment system. We also stand ready to cooperate with other agencies in fulfilling their mandates, as appropriate.
I hope you find this information helpful.
Sincerely,
[Ben Bernanke]
More From Business Insider
• New York Will Be Holding Hearings On Bitcoin
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• Dectaper Is Coming |
1,384,798,188 | 2013-11-18 18:09:48+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [29, 731, 848, 858, 1563, 2457, 2649, 2791, 2945]} | {"Bitcoin": [0]} | Bitcoin surges to new high ahead of U.S. government hearing | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-surges-high-ahead-u-180948207.html | Reuters | http://www.reuters.com/ | NEW YORK, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Bitcoin surged over 27 percent to a new high of US$675 on Monday ahead of a U.S. government hearing on possible regulation of the digital currency.
While not an official seal of approval, the hearing is giving some legitimacy to a payment mechanism that has been associated with illegal activities even as it gains acceptance by the general public and investment community.
Witnesses at the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing include officials from the Secret Service and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Justice Department's Criminal Division.
"The government is taking a very thoughtful and balanced approach to bitcoin and bitcoin regulation," said Barry Silbert, founder of the Bitcoin Investment Trust, launched in late September and valued at US$22.8 million on Friday. It holds around 53,000 Bitcoins.
Bitcoin traded as high as US$675 on Monday on Tokyo-based exchange Mt. Gox, the best-known operator of a bitcoin digital marketplace. That was a rise of 27.7 percent from Sunday's close. It last changed hands at US$672.
The digital currency, which trades 24 hours a day, every day, has risen around 404 percent in the last two months.
Association with drugs, money laundering, murder for hire and other illegal activities has not stymied interest in bitcoin, the digital currency not backed by any government or central bank and until recently a niche alternative currency touted by computer geeks and anti-government advocates.
The currency, whose supply is limited, is "mined" by solving math problems. Bitcoin transactions are tracked by a network of computers that validate transactions and prevent counterfeit.
In October, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation shut down Silk Road, an online marketplace used to buy and sell illegal drugs, and seized $3.6 million in bitcoins.
"Lawmakers are rightfully concerned about the illegal aspects of bitcoin but the fact that they're giving bitcoin the time of day helps cement its legitimacy," said Christopher Vecchio, currency analyst at DailyFX.
But it may also be government interest itself that is prompting the currency's huge moves of recent weeks, he said.
"If investors feel that bitcoin is truly legitimate but foresee supply constraints due to exchanges closing or new regulations hitting the market, there is a sense of urgency developing to obtain bitcoins now, 'while you can,'" said Vecchio.
Irrespective of the reason for the move, Bitcoin Investment Trust's Silbert at least is optimistic about the long-term outlook for the digital currency.
"Everyone is uncomfortable that the price has moved so quickly," Silbert said. "Bitcoin in its short history has gone through a series of bubbles and busts. But after every bust a new price base has formed."
Shares in the Bitcoin Investment Trust had a net asset value of $42.44 on Friday, up from $12.88 when the fund launched on September 25. Each share is 0.1 percent of a Bitcoin. |
1,384,805,459 | 2013-11-18 20:10:59+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [449, 7423, 7663]} | {} | Analysis: As market bubbles form, investors may want to take cover | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analysis-market-bubbles-form-investors-201059603.html | Reuters | http://www.reuters.com/ | By Steven C. Johnson
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Five years of rapid-fire money printing at the U.S. Federal Reserve and easy money policies at other central banks have left trillions of dollars sloshing around the world financial system, and some of it is ending up in some rather odd places.
The froth can be seen in everything from Pakistan's stock market to thoroughbred racehorses, rare paintings and gemstones, taxi licenses and the digital currency Bitcoin.
"When it gets like this, just pick your asset - a painting, a bottle of wine, whatever. It's almost always a sign that there's too much money floating around," said Howard Simons, a strategist at Bianco Research in Chicago.
Certainly, the risks don't look as great as they did in 2005-2007, when real estate prices in the U.S. and other countries skyrocketed, then collapsed, triggering the financial crisis. The most inflated prices are in smaller pockets of the markets than they were back then, so there is less systemic risk.
But if a series of smaller financial market bubbles deflate or even burst there will still be a lot of agony, investment strategists warn.
When the Fed does pull back from stimulating the economy by cutting back its quantitative easing program of bond buying - which is expected in the first half of 2014 - there could be some shocks for markets to withstand, said Win Thin, an emerging market strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman. "That could lead to some painful adjustments."
One toxic corner of the markets can infect stronger assets as investors seek to raise cash to cope with a plunge. "What I learned in the last two bear markets is that it doesn't matter if you own the crappy asset," said Simons. "If someone else does and starts panic selling, it takes your good stuff down too."
And a further bond market selloff, following the reversal this summer, could not only hurt investors but threaten a downturn - as mortgage rates and other borrowing costs climb.
ETERNAL BULLS
There is evidence of possible excess in many areas.
Getting into a taxi cab these days may no longer come with a menu of can't-miss stock tips from the driver but the cab's owner probably paid a steep price for the right to the license. At a New York auction last week, taxi medallions sold for more than $1 million, about double the prices paid five years ago.
As for U.S. stocks, it's hard to find many bearish investors despite - or because of - the 26 percent gain in the S&P 500 index this year and the 166 percent rise since 2009.
In Europe, it often feels as if the continent-wide debt crisis that threatened the euro never happened. Price-to-earnings ratios have soared to 2007 levels even as earnings momentum has sputtered. Over the last month, short-selling has dropped to a seven-year low and top performers in the STOXX Europe 600 index are shares that were once heavily shorted.
As hedge fund manager David Einhorn put it in a letter to investors in October: "When 'high short interest' becomes a viable stock-picking strategy and conventional valuation methods no longer apply for many stocks, we can't help but feel a sense of déjà vu," he said in reference to the dotcom stocks bubble and bust in 1998-2001.
IPO FEVER AT COMPANIES
That particular bubble turned investors, especially retail investors, into addicts for the latest stock offerings. And things are looking a bit frothy again. So far, 199 U.S. companies have gone public this year, the highest number since 2007, and some of the first-day gains have been huge.
Such a race to list is a sign that things are nearing a top, says Peter Atwater, president of Financial Insyghts, an investment advisory firm in Mendenhall, Pennsylvania.
While the broader U.S. market does not look particularly pricey - the S&P's forward P/E ratio of 15 is about bang in line with the long-run average - individual stocks certainly do.
Look no further than some of the biggest names coming to market in recent years, such as the social media star Twitter or electric car maker Tesla Motors.
At current market prices, after almost doubling on its first day of trading, the micro-blogging site is valued at almost $24 billion despite being unprofitable. Tesla is trading at a P/E ratio of around 80 based on expected 2014 earnings.
Even the retailer Container Store Group Inc, which sells things to put things in, saw its shares double on its stock market debut on November 1.
Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Equity Management, said, "nobody in their right mind would make an all cash offer at current levels for a lot of these companies."
AND ON THE FOOTBALL FIELD
Even professional athletes are getting in on the action.
Arian Foster, a National Football League player with the Houston Texans, was the asset for a planned IPO based on 20 percent of his future earnings, which he had sold to San Francisco-based Fantex. The firm would then sell stocks based on Foster's economic performance.
"I thought it was a joke," said Daniel Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co. "They're not robots, they wear down. What's the life of an average guy in the NFL, four years?"
Fantex, though, had to postpone the Foster IPO after the running back suffered a season-ending injury, underlining just how risky an investment it would have been.
IT'S THE BOND MARKET, STUPID
By suppressing interest rates, central banks have yield-starved investors falling over themselves to lend money to companies with less-than-stellar credit records, as well as looking for some of those exotic investments.
Quite a few investors, frightened that super-low interest rates will start rising next year, have bought up floating-rate loans. The only problem: many have no covenants, which usually limit the amount of debt a borrower can take on and let lenders have a say in the business if things start to go sour.
"People don't realize they're taking a lot of credit risk," said AllianceBernstein portfolio manager Gershon Distenfeld.
Meanwhile, high-yield bond issuers - companies with weak balance sheets and sub-investment grade ratings - are paying on average 5.8 percent to borrow, near record lows.
Default rates at around 2.5 percent are well below historical averages but Martin Fridson, head of FridsonVision, said recently he expects those default rates to spike to 8.4 percent between 2016-2020, which could cause a lot of forced selling.
POCKET MONEY
Perhaps one of the best ways to measure froth is to watch what the super-rich do with their pocket change. Lately, they seem to have developed an insatiable taste for fine art - a painting by Francis Bacon set a new high water mark when it fetched more than $142 million last week in New York. In Geneva, "Pink Star," a flawless pink diamond the size of a plum, sold for a cool $83 million, a record for a gemstone.
Even the market for thoroughbred racehorses is roaring away. In Europe, a one-year-old horse that had never been raced sold this year for 5 million pounds ($8.1 million), a record price.
"Most of the people involved in it are extremely rich, and lately they've had the money to spend," said Alastair Donald, a horse-buying expert at UK racehorse agent SackvilleDonald.
"There are ways of making money with racehorses, but mostly, it's a luxury, it's fun. It's about buying a dream."
CURRENCY FOR CRIMINALS?
Association with drugs, money laundering and other illegal activities has not tarnished the virtual shine of Bitcoin, the digital currency not backed by any government or central bank.
The currency, whose supply has been carefully controlled, on Monday soared above $600 from below $80 in early July. Societe Generale strategist Sebastien Galy said Bitcoin is an example of "how far and aggressively greed can push a deeply inelastic market."
And the casino approach isn't restricted to developed markets by any means. Pakistan is nobody's idea of a safe and predictable investment destination but one wouldn't know it from the nation's stock market. Pakistani stocks have nearly doubled since the start of 2012 and are well above their levels even before the financial crisis.
It's another instance of the reach for yield driving political risk considerations out the window, says GFT Forex managing partner Boris Schlossberg. "The Fed's QE," he said, "is having a spillover effect all over the world."
Consequences of the likely withdrawal of that support is the biggest issue for 2014. The risk is that even investors who have identified bubbles will wait too long to exit.
(Reporting by Steven C. Johnson and Luke Swiderski in New York, Blaise Robinson in Paris and Francesco Canepa in London; Editing by Martin Howell and Tim Dobbyn) |
1,384,806,600 | 2013-11-18 20:30:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1242, 1665, 1833, 1978, 2119]} | {} | Cryptogenic Bullion - The Virtual Commodity Blurring the Lines Between Currency and Big Data | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cryptogenic-bullion-virtual-commodity-blurring-203000438.html | ACCESSWIRE | https://www.accesswire.com/ | The lead project developer of Cryptogenic Bullion (CB), Mercury Stills, recently unveiled details of his major project, MADEsparq Project. A white paper has been published on the CB website. From the white paper, "This new paradigm, named the MADEsparq Project, aims to blur the defining lines between currency, technology, and data by using the CB block chain to mediate the mapping of data to create, and add value, to content and unstructured and semi-structured data." The MADEsparq Project website, MADEsparq.org , is under construction but will begin to offer some of the functionality mentioned in the white paper by mid-January. Moreover, the client software will have an open alpha release by the middle of next month. "The project is meant to intricately involve the inherent random structure of the Cryptogenic Bullion block chain and spark new ways of categorizing and collaborating about data, regardless of your interest or level of expertise. It's an open-source, open-collaboration project, so it made sense to have the alpha release be open as well," said Stills. It's that intricate relationship between CB and the growing number of participants using the CB network and block chain (ie. the public ledger system similar to Bitcoin) to mediate all the data categorizations and mappings, from a variety of knowledge-domains, that creates intrinsic value for the virtual commodity. "I honestly think this paradigm I'm trying to create will change everyone's perspective on the possibilities of virtual currencies. We can do so much with them, not just as a form of transferring value. And that, in turn, will help accelerate mass adoption of CB and Bitcoin." The MADEsparq Project supports only the virtual commodity, Cryptogenic Bullion. But other virtual currencies and commodities might be supported. "Eventually, Bitcoin will be supported, but not until we're in beta development." Cryptogenic Bullion's price at the time of this writing is about 0.0017 per Bitcoin or $0.92 and trades on various virtual currency exchanges, and its total market value is about $900K, which is miniscule compared to Bitcoin's $7 billion market value. "Cryptogenic Bullion was released less than five months ago and we're just now announcing our first major project. It's obviously an amazing time for participants to get a stake in the currency and to try to be independent from the corporate banking sector, while also pursuing one's own dreams. There's dozens of global currencies backed by centralized and often corrupt governments. Now, the people are taking all finance matters into their own hands. Soon there will be a vast system of virtual currencies and commodities, many with their own niche, akin to our current global system of fiat currencies. Decentralized, peer-to-peer virtual currency networks will change the way the world works for the better." Story continues For more information about Cryptogenic Bullion visit http://cryptogenicbullion.org/ . Contact Info: Name: Mercury Stills Email: info@CryptogenicBullion.org |
1,384,808,400 | 2013-11-18 21:00:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [55, 473]} | {} | STOCKS FALL, BITCOIN GOES INSANE: Here's What You Need To Know | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stocks-fall-bitcoin-goes-insane-210003832.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/Stephen Lam
A chain of block erupters used for Bitcoin mining is pictured at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, California, October 28, 2013.
At one point in the morning, we sawDow 16,000 and S&P 1,800. But that rally was short-lived.
First, the scoreboard:
• Dow: 15,976.0 , +14.3, +0.0 %
• S&P 500: 1,791.5, -6.6, -0.3%
• NASDAQ: 3,949.0, -36.9, -0.9%
And now the top stories:
• Stocks hit new all-time intraday highs today before retreating.
• However, Bitcoin really stole the show today,exploding all the way to around $675, up from a$500 levelyesterday. The U.S.Senate is hearing testimonies about the viabilityof such digital currencies today. " ... while these types of innovations may pose risks related to law enforcement and supervisory matters, there are also areas in which they may hold long-term promise, particularly if the innovations promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system ,"said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in a letter.
• TheNAHB's homebuilder confidence indexwas unchanged at 54 in November from an October level that was revised down from 55. "The recent improvements in home builder sentiment have outpaced housing starts compared with past trends," noted Barclays' Cooper Howes. "As a result, we expect that a stronger rebound in construction activity would be required to push sentiment significantly above its current level."
• Shares ofTesla tankedfor no obvious reason.
• Don't Miss:14 US Cities Where Foreclosures Are A Big Problem »
More From Business Insider
• STOCKS RALLY TO NEW ALL-TIME HIGH: Here's What You Need To Know
• STOCKS HIT NEW ALL-TIME HIGHS: Here's What You Need To Know
• STOCKS FALL: Here's What You Need To Know |
1,384,809,172 | 2013-11-18 21:12:52+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [9, 216, 999, 1046, 1130]} | {"Bitcoin": [27, 69]} | One Of The World's Largest Bitcoin Businesses Temporarily Ran Out of Bitcoins To Sell | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/one-worlds-largest-bitcoin-businesses-211252101.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Coinbase
Bitcoin had an insane day, rising more than $140, on volumes of close to 1 million transactions.
As a result, Coinbase, which acts as the market-making intermediary for hundreds of retail outlets who accept Bitcoin, reached its buying limit.
Here's the message the site left to clients an hour agoas transcribed by ycominbator:
Due to higher than normal buy volumes, we are unable to provide exact price quotes right now.
Instead of pausing buys entirely, we decided to give people the option to purchase bitcoin at the market price in a few days. Once your USD funds arrive, we will exchange them to bitcoin at the market price at approximately Friday Nov 22, 2013 at 07:56AM PST.
Note that you can cancel your order at any time up until your bitcoin arrive from the transfer history page.
The market price of bitcoin changes frequently. Below are some recent prices to give you an idea. These do not guarantee what the price will be in a few days."
Insanity.
More From Business Insider
• Bitcoin Just Hit $500 For The First Time
• The Bitcoin Insanity Continues — Prices Top $450
• New York Will Be Holding Hearings On Bitcoin |
1,384,819,604 | 2013-11-19 00:06:44+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [449, 7406, 7646]} | {} | As market bubbles form, investors may take cover | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/market-bubbles-form-investors-may-cover-000644042--finance.html | Reuters | https://www.reuters.com/ | By Steven C. Johnson NEW YORK (Reuters) - Five years of rapid-fire money printing at the U.S. Federal Reserve and easy money policies at other central banks have left trillions of dollars sloshing around the world financial system, and some of it is ending up in some rather odd places. The froth can be seen in everything from Pakistan's stock market to thoroughbred racehorses, rare paintings and gemstones, taxi licenses and the digital currency Bitcoin. "When it gets like this, just pick your asset - a painting, a bottle of wine, whatever. It's almost always a sign that there's too much money floating around," said Howard Simons, a strategist at Bianco Research in Chicago. Certainly, the risks don't look as great as they did in 2005-2007, when real estate prices in the U.S. and other countries skyrocketed, then collapsed, triggering the financial crisis. The most inflated prices are in smaller pockets of the markets than they were back then, so there is less systemic risk. But if a series of smaller financial market bubbles deflate or even burst there will still be a lot of agony, investment strategists warn. When the Fed does pull back from stimulating the economy by cutting back its quantitative easing program of bond buying - which is expected in the first half of 2014 - there could be some shocks for markets to withstand, said Win Thin, an emerging market strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman. "That could lead to some painful adjustments." One toxic corner of the markets can infect stronger assets as investors seek to raise cash to cope with a plunge. "What I learned in the last two bear markets is that it doesn't matter if you own the crappy asset," said Simons. "If someone else does and starts panic selling, it takes your good stuff down too." And a further bond market selloff, following the reversal this summer, could not only hurt investors but threaten a downturn - as mortgage rates and other borrowing costs climb. ETERNAL BULLS There is evidence of possible excess in many areas. Getting into a taxi cab these days may no longer come with a menu of can't-miss stock tips from the driver but the cab's owner probably paid a steep price for the right to the license. At a New York auction last week, taxi medallions sold for more than $1 million, about double the prices paid five years ago. As for U.S. stocks, it's hard to find many bearish investors despite - or because of - the 26 percent gain in the S&P 500 index this year and the 166 percent rise since 2009. In Europe, it often feels as if the continent-wide debt crisis that threatened the euro never happened. Price-to-earnings ratios have soared to 2007 levels even as earnings momentum has sputtered. Over the last month, short-selling has dropped to a seven-year low and top performers in the STOXX Europe 600 indexare shares that were once heavily shorted. As hedge fund manager David Einhorn put it in a letter to investors in October: "When 'high short interest' becomes a viable stock-picking strategy and conventional valuation methods no longer apply for many stocks, we can't help but feel a sense of déjà vu," he said in reference to the dotcom stocks bubble and bust in 1998-2001. IPO FEVER AT COMPANIES That particular bubble turned investors, especially retail investors, into addicts for the latest stock offerings. And things are looking a bit frothy again. So far, 199 U.S. companies have gone public this year, the highest number since 2007, and some of the first-day gains have been huge. Such a race to list is a sign that things are nearing a top, says Peter Atwater, president of Financial Insyghts, an investment advisory firm in Mendenhall, Pennsylvania. While the broader U.S. market does not look particularly pricey - the S&P's forward P/E ratio of 15 is about bang in line with the long-run average - individual stocks certainly do. Look no further than some of the biggest names coming to market in recent years, such as the social media star Twitteror electric car maker Tesla Motors. At current market prices, after almost doubling on its first day of trading, the micro-blogging site is valued at almost $24 billion despite being unprofitable. Tesla is trading at a P/E ratio of around 80 based on expected 2014 earnings. Even the retailer Container Store Group Inc, which sells things to put things in, saw its shares double on its stock market debut on November 1. Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Equity Management, said, "nobody in their right mind would make an all cash offer at current levels for a lot of these companies." AND ON THE FOOTBALL FIELD Even professional athletes are getting in on the action. Arian Foster, a National Football League player with the Houston Texans, was the asset for a planned IPO based on 20 percent of his future earnings, which he had sold to San Francisco-based Fantex. The firm would then sell stocks based on Foster's economic performance. "I thought it was a joke," said Daniel Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co. "They're not robots, they wear down. What's the life of an average guy in the NFL, four years?" Fantex, though, had to postpone the Foster IPO after the running back suffered a season-ending injury, underlining just how risky an investment it would have been. IT'S THE BOND MARKET, STUPID By suppressing interest rates, central banks have yield-starved investors falling over themselves to lend money to companies with less-than-stellar credit records, as well as looking for some of those exotic investments. Quite a few investors, frightened that super-low interest rates will start rising next year, have bought up floating-rate loans. The only problem: many have no covenants, which usually limit the amount of debt a borrower can take on and let lenders have a say in the business if things start to go sour. "People don't realize they're taking a lot of credit risk," said AllianceBernstein portfolio manager Gershon Distenfeld. Meanwhile, high-yield bond issuers - companies with weak balance sheets and sub-investment grade ratings - are paying on average 5.8 percent to borrow, near record lows. Default rates at around 2.5 percent are well below historical averages but Martin Fridson, head of FridsonVision, said recently he expects those default rates to spike to 8.4 percent between 2016-2020, which could cause a lot of forced selling. POCKET MONEY Perhaps one of the best ways to measure froth is to watch what the super-rich do with their pocket change. Lately, they seem to have developed an insatiable taste for fine art - a painting by Francis Bacon set a new high water mark when it fetched more than $142 million last week in New York. In Geneva, "Pink Star," a flawless pink diamond the size of a plum, sold for a cool $83 million, a record for a gemstone. Even the market for thoroughbred racehorses is roaring away. In Europe, a one-year-old horse that had never been raced sold this year for 5 million pounds, a record price. "Most of the people involved in it are extremely rich, and lately they've had the money to spend," said Alastair Donald, a horse-buying expert at UK racehorse agent SackvilleDonald. "There are ways of making money with racehorses, but mostly, it's a luxury, it's fun. It's about buying a dream." CURRENCY FOR CRIMINALS? Association with drugs, money laundering and other illegal activities has not tarnished the virtual shine of Bitcoin, the digital currency not backed by any government or central bank. The currency, whose supply has been carefully controlled, on Monday soared above $600 from below $80 in early July. Societe Generale strategist Sebastien Galy said Bitcoin is an example of "how far and aggressively greed can push a deeply inelastic market." And the casino approach isn't restricted to developed markets by any means. Pakistan is nobody's idea of a safe and predictable investment destination but one wouldn't know it from the nation's stock market. Pakistani stockshave nearly doubled since the start of 2012 and are well above their levels even before the financial crisis. It's another instance of the reach for yield driving political risk considerations out the window, says GFT Forex managing partner Boris Schlossberg. "The Fed's QE," he said, "is having a spillover effect all over the world." Consequences of the likely withdrawal of that support is the biggest issue for 2014. The risk is that even investors who have identified bubbles will wait too long to exit. (Reporting by Steven C. Johnson and Luke Swiderski in New York, Blaise Robinson in Paris and Francesco Canepa in London; Editing by Martin Howell and Tim Dobbyn) |
1,384,838,100 | 2013-11-19 05:15:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [0, 234, 461, 782, 1159, 1348, 1597, 1748, 1970, 2189, 2327, 2422, 2528, 3124, 3226]} | {"Bitcoin": [15]} | Why Regulating Bitcoin Is Like Herding Cats | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-regulating-bitcoin-herding-cats-051500106.html | The Fiscal Times | http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/ | Bitcoin is on the brink of blasting into the mainstream, as restaurants, coffee shops and hotels begin to accept the virtual currency, leaving lawmakers and regulators scrambling to sort out how best it can be regulated. The price of Bitcoin soared to a record high of $750 on Mt. Gox exchange on Monday, ahead of a congressional hearing where lawmakers from the Senate Homeland Security Committee discussed slapping regulations on the relatively new currency. Bitcoin , which is not backed by a central bank and can be traded privately or on a handful of exchanges, is known as the Internet’s black market’s currency of choice. Just last month, federal law enforcement officers shut down Silk Road–a hidden online marketplace known as the “Ebay of illicit goods” where people used Bitcoin to purchase drugs, guns, prostitutes and other illicit goods and services. Related: Porn, Drugs, Hitmen, Hackers--This is the Deep Web As the digital currency gains more popularity beyond the dark corners of the Internet, regulators are beginning to acknowledge it as a credible alternative to traditional payment methods in need of some oversight. Before the hearing, Bitcoin received an unexpected nod of support from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who said in a letter to the committee that it “may hold long-term promise.” Indeed, the 12 million Bitcoins in circulation are being used to purchase everything from sandwiches at a Subway franchise in California to online dating memberships on OkCupid.com, and hotel rooms at the Howard Johnson hotel chain. Even politicians are getting in on the Bitcoin boom. Just last week the Federal Elections Commission announced that it would be taking the first steps to allow political campaigns to accept Bitcoin donations. Although federal and state officials have already issued a handful of guidelines to monitor digital currencies, they are still working toward a unified strategy to address potential regulatory problems. Bitcoin advocates, however, caution that excessive or intrusive regulations could hamper the United States’ role in what they say is the next “technological revolution.” Story continues Testifying before the committee, Bitcoin Foundation General Counsel Patrick Murck said, "Incautious behavior on the part of governments and law enforcement could make the Bitcoin environment harder to work with.” He added that if regulations are too intrusive, more Bitcoin users could go underground—making any regulations nearly impossible to enforce. Related: What Are Bitcoins and Why Should You Care? All three administration officials testifying agreed with Murck that regulators must be careful not to stifle innovation. “One of our biggest challenges is striking the right balance between the costs and benefits of regulation,”the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) director Jennifer Calvery said. It ensures a level playing field for industry and minimizes gaps in our coverage.” In the meantime, officials from the U.S. Secret Service, which investigates counterfeit currencies and FinCen told the committee that companies that deal in Bitcoin must comply with existing money-laundering rules. Under these rules, money transmitters using Bitcoin are required to register with FinCen. They are also required to implement anti-money laundering programs and keep records of their customers, as well as report any suspicious transactions. Senate Homeland Security Chairman Tom Carper (D-DE) made clear that his committee is only in its “information collecting” stage, and did not offer a legislative agenda to address the currency. Instead, the committee will have a second hearing later in the week to continue questioning both industry experts and law enforcement officials. Follow Brianna Ehley on Twitter @BriannaEhley Top Stories from The Fiscal Times: How Our Sprawling Nanny State is Putting Parents Out of Work The Expensive Truth About Gift Cards What Carl Icahn and Miley Cyrus Have in Common |
1,384,856,100 | 2013-11-19 10:15:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [5474]} | {} | How Yellen Will Shape the Fed’s QE Exit Strategy | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/yellen-shape-fed-qe-exit-101500996.html | The Fiscal Times | http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/ | After Janet Yellen’s excellent performance before the Senate Banking Committee last Thursday, she will almost surely be confirmed as the next Fed chair.
Once she’s confirmed, there are several important issues the Fed must address under her leadership such as improving the Fed’s communications with the public, ensuring that the financial sector is properly regulated, taking a stance on whether the Fed should pop bubbles, deciding whether to continue forward guidance in its present form, and so on. But the most important and most immediate problem Yellen will face during her term as chair is guiding the Fed to a smooth exit from its non-conventional policies.
The Fed’s non-conventional policies,quantitative easingin particular, have swollen its balance sheet to between four and five times its normal size, from $870 billion in August 2007 to 3.9 trillion on November 13 of this year. Reversing these policies is anything but a trivial task, and there are three main risks associated with the Fed’s exit from these policies.
Related: 4 Questions Janet Yellen Needs to Answer
Exiting too soon: If the Fed begins reversing its stimulus measures too soon it could make an already too slow recovery even slower, or stall the recovery altogether. This could be very costly, particularly to the extent that it adds to the number of long term unemployed. As a recentNY Timesarticle explained, “The long-term jobless, after all, tend to be in poorer health, and to have higher rates of suicide and strained family relations. Even the children of the long-term unemployed see lower earnings down the road. The consequences are grave for the country, too: lost production, increased social spending, decreased tax revenue and slower growth.”
Selling financial assets too fast: As noted above, the Fed is holding approximately $3 trillion in financial assets over and above what it holds in normal times. If it sells these assets too fast, the sheer volume of sales could disturb financial markets and interfere with the financing of business investment, housing purchases, and consumer durables such as automobiles.
The main reason the Fed might want to sell assets quickly is to avoid or offset an outbreak of inflation. So far, there is no sign at all of an inflation problem, but suppose that the risk of an inflationary outbreak increases to the point where the Fed is compelled to take action. The problem is that with its balance sheet swollen far beyond its normal size, and with a huge quantity of reserves piled up in banks, it could take a large sale of financial assets before reserves fall enough to cause interest rates begin to rise. So large that it puts financial markets at risk.
However, now that the Fed can pay interest on bank reserve balances – a power granted to the Fed during the Great Recession – the chance that it will need to sell a large volume of assets to combat inflation is substantially reduced. Raising the interest rate on reserves freezes reserves inside banks since banks can make as much by holding on to the reserves as they can by making loans, and so long as reserves are frozen in banks rather than being used to finance new investment or consumption the inflation risk is minimized. Thus, the Fed does not have to put financial markets at risk by selling a large volume of financial assets should it need to fight inflation, it can raise the interest rate it pays on reserve instead.
Related: Janet Yellen—Brainy, Brave and Brooklyn Strong
Exiting Too Slowly: The final risk is that the Fed waits too long to begin reducing the size of its balance sheet. The main worry here is that a late exit would increase the risk of an outbreak of inflation and also cause inflation expectations, which have been well anchored throughout the crisis, to increase and become self-fulfilling.
It’s important to recognize, however, that the costs of an outbreak of inflation – which the Fed would very likely bring under control quickly in any case – would not be as costly as exiting too soon and adding to the unemployment problem. The main problems associated with inflation are the costs of changing prices frequently, difficulty making long-term commitments due to uncertainty about future inflation rates, and unintended redistribution of income.
However, the cost of changing prices, i.e. the “menu cost” as it is known isn’t as costly as it once was due to computers and digital technology. And uncertainty about future inflation rates and redistribution is not a big problem so long as the Fed brings inflation under control within a reasonable amount of time, as I have no doubt it would under Yellen’s leadership.
Thus, and importantly for policy, despite what the inflation hawks would have us believe the expected costs of exiting too slowly and potentially experiencing an outbreak of inflation are not as large as the expected costs of exiting too soon and slowing the recovery even further. Fortunately, while a Yellen Fed is unlikely to tolerate a large increase in inflation, I am very confident that Yellen understands very well that if a mistake is to be made; exiting too soon is more costly than exiting too late. That’s one of the reasons I am such a strong supporter of her nomination to be the next Fed chair, and so pleased it looks as though she will be confirmed.
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1,384,858,057 | 2013-11-19 10:47:37+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [139, 1619, 1743, 1945, 2402]} | {"Bitcoin": [46]} | Currency Cops Want Congress to Steer Clear of Bitcoin, Thanks | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/currency-cops-want-congress-steer-104737848.html | BusinessWeek | http://www.businessweek.com/ | As he kicked off a congressional hearing on virtual currencies, Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) made an admission that should surprise no one: Bitcoin “confused the heck” out of him. His task, he said, was just to find out what Congress could do to help law enforcement as they tried to confront the novel challenges posed by the anonymous virtual currency.
A bit more surprising was the answer he got from representatives from the law enforcement agencies who testified. No one disputed that virtual currencies are great for facilitating illegal behavior, like buying child porn, drugs, and weapons, or paying to get people killed. But everyone had pretty much the same answer for him: “No, thanks.”
Mythili Raman, acting assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice, said the department is doing just fine, using existing money laundering statutes to prosecute EGold and Liberty Reserve, virtual currencies it busted for money laundering offenses in the last five years. Likewise, criminal statutes on the books seem to be sufficient to prosecute the man recently arrested for allegedly running Silk Road, the online black market. “As our track record shows, we are up to the challenge, and we are innovating as the criminals are innovating,” she said at the hearing. “I do think we have the statutory tools that we need, for the most part.”
The Department of Justice seems to feel entitled to beat its chest about its technical savvy. The Liberty Reserve case is the largest money laundering case it has ever brought, and the Silk Road bust left it holding $70 million worth of Bitcoins.
Ed Lowery, the special agent in charge of the criminal division of the Secret Service, said he doesn’t even think Bitcoin is the virtual currency of choice for the international criminal networks that his agency considers its primary adversary in the cybercrime world. The decentralized and uncontrollable nature of Bitcoin apparently makes the gangs of Eastern Europe as queasy as it does U.S. officials. While virtual currencies have indeed been used by criminals, Lowery said, the most effective way to combat them is to try to help toughen the spines of countries whose lax regulations allow criminals to operate with impunity.
Following suit, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, director of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, said worries about Bitcoin, but she didn’t offer a lot of advice about how helpful but baffled lawmakers such as Carper could pitch in. It turns out that not every problem has a high-tech answer.
“Cash is still probably the best medium for laundering money,” she said. |
1,384,858,057 | 2013-11-19 10:47:37+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [139, 1619, 1743, 1945, 2402]} | {"Bitcoin": [46]} | Currency Cops Want Congress to Steer Clear of Bitcoin, Thanks | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/currency-cops-want-congress-steer-104737848.html | BusinessWeek | http://www.businessweek.com/ | As he kicked off a congressional hearing on virtual currencies, Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) made an admission that should surprise no one: Bitcoin “confused the heck” out of him. His task, he said, was just to find out what Congress could do to help law enforcement as they tried to confront the novel challenges posed by the anonymous virtual currency.
A bit more surprising was the answer he got from representatives from the law enforcement agencies who testified. No one disputed that virtual currencies are great for facilitating illegal behavior, like buying child porn, drugs, and weapons, or paying to get people killed. But everyone had pretty much the same answer for him: “No, thanks.”
Mythili Raman, acting assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice, said the department is doing just fine, using existing money laundering statutes to prosecute EGold and Liberty Reserve, virtual currencies it busted for money laundering offenses in the last five years. Likewise, criminal statutes on the books seem to be sufficient to prosecute the man recently arrested for allegedly running Silk Road, the online black market. “As our track record shows, we are up to the challenge, and we are innovating as the criminals are innovating,” she said at the hearing. “I do think we have the statutory tools that we need, for the most part.”
The Department of Justice seems to feel entitled to beat its chest about its technical savvy. The Liberty Reserve case is the largest money laundering case it has ever brought, and the Silk Road bust left it holding $70 million worth of Bitcoins.
Ed Lowery, the special agent in charge of the criminal division of the Secret Service, said he doesn’t even think Bitcoin is the virtual currency of choice for the international criminal networks that his agency considers its primary adversary in the cybercrime world. The decentralized and uncontrollable nature of Bitcoin apparently makes the gangs of Eastern Europe as queasy as it does U.S. officials. While virtual currencies have indeed been used by criminals, Lowery said, the most effective way to combat them is to try to help toughen the spines of countries whose lax regulations allow criminals to operate with impunity.
Following suit, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, director of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, said worries about Bitcoin, but she didn’t offer a lot of advice about how helpful but baffled lawmakers such as Carper could pitch in. It turns out that not every problem has a high-tech answer.
“Cash is still probably the best medium for laundering money,” she said. |
1,384,858,825 | 2013-11-19 11:00:25+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [154, 266, 388, 498, 806, 1015, 1168, 1216, 1344, 1447, 1588, 1747, 1857], "BTC": [1883, 1912]} | {"Bitcoin": [3]} | As Bitcoin Inches Toward Legitimacy, ETF may Soon Follow | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-inches-toward-legitimacy-etf-110025211.html | ETF Trends | http://www.etftrends.com/ | On Monday, representatives from the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission told the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security that Bitcoins, the controversial digital security, are in fact legitimate financial tools.
There are over 12 million Bitcoins in circulation with a market value of almost $6.55 billion,according to bitcoincharts.com. At that market value, Bitcoins in circulation are worth almost 50% more than Yelp (YELP).
In anticipation of the Monday’s hearings, Bitcoin surged 25% to $619 on Monday afternoon. On Nov. 14, the digital currency traversed $400 for the first time,marking a quadruple in just 90 days.
The digital currency’s rapid appreciation combined with verbiage from regulators that appears to legitimize the currency’s utility could mean the idea of a Bitcoin exchange traded fund is not as fanciful as previously thought.
Earlier this year, the Winklevoss twins of Facebook (FB) fame, filed plans with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust. At the time, the filing did not include a ticker, expense ratio or possible release date, indicating that a launch date was not imminent.[Bitcoin ETF may Become a Reality]
The idea of a Bitcoin ETF initially had its detractors because of the currency’s opaque and unregulated market. However, the SEC acknowledged Bitcoins can be considered currencies and therefore would fall under that agency’s regulatory purview.[Bitcoin ETF: How Crazy of an Idea is It?]
“The vision of the exchange traded product is to create a simple solution to the problem of buying Bitcoins if you don’t want to purchase and store them,” said Tyler Winklevoss in a telephone interview with ETF Trends in July.
Some investors probably wish a Bitcoin ETF was available in January when the currency traded below $14. At this writing Monday afternoon the Bitcoin/U.S. dollar pair (BTC/USD) traded around $658.
BTC/USD
The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product. |
1,384,864,200 | 2013-11-19 12:30:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1114, 1445, 1676]} | {} | 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-things-know-opening-bell-123052202.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Television news personality Maria Bartiromo
Good morning! Here's what you need to know.
• Markets in Asia closed mostly lower. China's Shanghai Composite (-0.19%) and Hang Seng (-0.01%) both retreated after yesterday's large gains. Japan's Nikkei fell -0.25%. European markets were also down across the board, with France's CAC 40 off most at -1.08%. U.S. futures were pointing lower.
• The OECD lowered its global growth estimates. 2013 GDP is now expected at 2.7% versus 3.6% forecast in May, and 2014 GDP is now expected at 3.6% versus 5.8% forecast in May. “Most of the emerging economies have underlying fragilities that mean they cannot continue growing as they used to,” OECD Chief EconomistPier Carlo Padoansaid in an interview. “They used to be an important support engine for global growth in bad times. Now the reverse is true and advanced economies can’t be said to be in very good times again.”
• European auto salesclimbed for the second straight monthin October thanks to a cash-for-clunkers program in Spain and modestly improving economic conditions across the continent.
• Bitcoin prices continued to fluctuate wildly through the evening and into this morning, at one point breaching $900 before rapidly falling back more than 30% to a bit under $600. They're now at $693. The digital currency had at least three different forces pushing it higher yesterday: Ben Bernanke,who saiddigital currencies like Bitcoin "may hold long-term promise;"a bullish Senate hearingduring the current moment in digital currencies was compared to the early days of the Internet and credit cards; anda column by the FT's Izabella Kaminskasuggesting many Bitcoin miners now need prices to move higher to justify the rising cost of production.
• The National Highway Transportation Administrationsaysit's opened a probe into recent Tesla Model S fires. The results would affect 13,000 vehicles.
• JPMorgan finalized its $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department,the Wall Street Journal's Devlin Barrett and Dan Fitzpatrick report. There's still a bit of ambiguity over how Washington Mutual's legal liabilities are resolved. The firm, "had previously said a FDIC receivership that liquidated the thrift should absorb any claims [but Attorney General Eric] Holder wanted to avoid a situation in which a government penalty of a bank is essentially extracted from another government agency, according to these people," the pair report. The bank agreed it won't go after the FDIC for any portion of the $13 billion deal. But the bank's $4 billion FHFA settlement,"doesn't contain any language preventing J.P. Morgan from seeking repayment from the FDIC receivership even though Justice Department lawyers had urged the FHFA to bar J.P. Morgan from going after the FDIC. It is possible J.P. Morgan would preserve the ability to go after the FDIC receivership for claims falling outside the Justice Department settlement," WSJ says.
• Veteran business news reporter Mario Bartiromois leaving CNBCfor Fox News Business. Matt Drudge was the first to report it. Her CNBC contract expires this year.BI's Julia LaRoche explained why this is great news for CNBC's Kelly Evans.
• Tech darling Dropbox, a consumer cloud data storage business, is seeking a $8 billion valuation for its latest round of funding,Businessweek's Ashlee Vance reported. It would be more than double its last round in 2011.
• Home Depot just reported Q3 EPS of $0.95/share beating consensus estimates bu $0.06. The chain also boosted its FY13 outlook. Best Buy Q3 earnings came in at $0.18/share, besting consensus by $0.04. But comps were only up 0.3% versus 0.7% forecast.
• The BLS will release Q3 employment cost index data at 8:30 am, with no change expected from the prior quarter. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks at 7 pm eastern at the National Association of Business Economics. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans also speaks today.
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1,384,903,660 | 2013-11-19 23:27:40+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [612]} | {} | Because, in 1 Chart | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/because-1-chart-232740555.html | The Atlantic | http://www.theatlantic.com/ | The way Americans use the word "because" is changing, as chronicled by my colleague Megan Garber.
So, I got curious about the word "because." I've been playing with a bot—a little bit of code—that probes what Google suggests to searchers. Google makes these suggestions on the basis of what people have previously searched. So, I see it as a way to see into the collective consciousness. Basically, the bot works by typing "because a" and see what Google says. Then, "because b," and "because c," and so on. All those suggestions get compiled and we can play with the file.
I tried this for the first time with "Bitcoin" yesterday, butmy probe yielded mostly predictable results.
"Because," on the other hand, yielded delightful results. They were particularly interesting because almost all of them could be classified into one of six categories, and the outliers are ... so, so strange.
First, let me show you some example searches from each category:
Music/Lyrics:"because he lives hymn," "because the night lyrics," "because elliott smith"
Language Queries:"because grammar," "because Korean," "because part of speech"
Memes:"because aliens," "because China," "because race car"
Product/Organization:"because foundation," "because bags," "because justice matters"
Quotes:"because knowledge is power gi joe," "because dennis is a bastard man," "because good is dumb"
Coding/Computer/Homework Help:"because alwayscreate was specified," "as much because x as because y," "because xlive.dll"
OK, now, get this: When I applied these categories to the 104 suggestions Google had given around the word "because," all but nine made sense in one of these categories. Granted, I was stretching thingsa little, as in the search "because vine," which I classified under memes because I assume people are looking for the short video on Vine of Rihanna saying "because." (Trust me,this is a thing.)
But with that caveat, here's the pie chart of these categories.
Just look at how many of the searches are around music and lyrics! Along with language questions, that's more than 50 percent of Google's suggestions.
I can't quite tell you why, but I found this fascinating.
Some of the particular searches yield bizarre results, too.
Take: "because bureaucracies are so rule-based they." This turns out to be a quote from an old AP Government exam! For some reason, students (I assume) were typing this quote into Google. Or maybe it was teachers trying to catch students? I'm still not sure.
Or another weird one: "because zombies can't jump." There is a game called "Zombies Can't Jump." But there's no reason to Google "because zombies can't jump." At least no reason that enough people would have that they'd show up on Google's radar.
A last interesting example: "because pronunciation." As a native American English speaker, I don't really think about the fact that Americans tend to say "because" as "becuz."But people learning English find it confusing, at least according to this video, which is the top search result.
What's the point of these kind of detailed analyses of individual searches? Well, Google (and to a lesser extent Bing), define the informational boundaries during most people's first step in knowledge gathering. Their suggestions both reflect and influence what people know and want to know about a topic.
There is a complex web of Internet and pop culture, education and work, that surround even a simple word like "because."
Here's the full list, along with my codings.
[{"String": "because aliens", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because abbreviation", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because alwayscreate was specified", "Category": "Coding"}, {"String": "because asl", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because beatles", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because beatles lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because bags", "Category": "Product"}, {"String": "because bureaucracies are so rule-based they", "Category": "Homework"}, {"String": "because china", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because comma", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because cats", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because cats iphone case", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because dave clark five", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because dennis is a bastard man", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because definition", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because days come and go", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because environment variable django_settings_module is undefined", "Category": "Coding"}, {"String": "because elliott smith", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because every mother matters", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because everyone else is boring", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because french", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because foundation", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because fitness", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because freedom", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because grammar", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because good is dumb", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because guitar chords", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because god is real", "Category": "Product"}, {"String": "because he lives", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because he lives lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because he lives chords", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because he lives hymn", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because i got high", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "afroman because i got high lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because i said so", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because i said i would", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because justice matters", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because justice matters rise", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because japan", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because jesus", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because knowledge is power", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because kids count conference", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because knowledge is power gi joe", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because korean", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because life is short and you are hot", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because lyrics beatles", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because lee hi lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because massage", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because music", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because music is my heartbeat shoes", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because maybe", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because nice matters", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because not only but also", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because nobody likes bras", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because ninjas are too busy", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because of you", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because of winn dixie", "Category": "Product"}, {"String": "because of you lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because of who you are", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because part of speech", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because preposition", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because punctuation", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because pronunciation", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because quotes", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "p because q", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because quitters quit", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because quotes tumblr", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because racecar", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because reasons", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because resources are scarce", "Category": "Homework"}, {"String": "because rihanna vine", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because synonym", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because shanna said so", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because song", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because sunggyu lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because the night", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because the internet", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because the night lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because thesaurus", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because u loved me", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because u loved me lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because usage", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because used in a sentence", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because vine", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because vs since", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because vs due to", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because vs that", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because we can", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because we can lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because we can tour", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because we want to", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because x", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "as much because x as because y", "Category": "Homework"}, {"String": "because xm", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because xlive.dll", "Category": "Coding"}, {"String": "because you loved me", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because you loved me lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because you live lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because you loved me mp3", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because zombies can't jump", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because zinc has nearly the same", "Category": "Homework"}, {"String": "because zlib1.dll", "Category": "Coding"}, {"String": "because zombies are coming dear", "Category": "Meme"}]
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1,384,903,660 | 2013-11-19 23:27:40+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [612]} | {} | Because, in 1 Chart | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/because-1-chart-232740555.html | The Atlantic | http://www.theatlantic.com/ | The way Americans use the word "because" is changing, as chronicled by my colleague Megan Garber.
So, I got curious about the word "because." I've been playing with a bot—a little bit of code—that probes what Google suggests to searchers. Google makes these suggestions on the basis of what people have previously searched. So, I see it as a way to see into the collective consciousness. Basically, the bot works by typing "because a" and see what Google says. Then, "because b," and "because c," and so on. All those suggestions get compiled and we can play with the file.
I tried this for the first time with "Bitcoin" yesterday, butmy probe yielded mostly predictable results.
"Because," on the other hand, yielded delightful results. They were particularly interesting because almost all of them could be classified into one of six categories, and the outliers are ... so, so strange.
First, let me show you some example searches from each category:
Music/Lyrics:"because he lives hymn," "because the night lyrics," "because elliott smith"
Language Queries:"because grammar," "because Korean," "because part of speech"
Memes:"because aliens," "because China," "because race car"
Product/Organization:"because foundation," "because bags," "because justice matters"
Quotes:"because knowledge is power gi joe," "because dennis is a bastard man," "because good is dumb"
Coding/Computer/Homework Help:"because alwayscreate was specified," "as much because x as because y," "because xlive.dll"
OK, now, get this: When I applied these categories to the 104 suggestions Google had given around the word "because," all but nine made sense in one of these categories. Granted, I was stretching thingsa little, as in the search "because vine," which I classified under memes because I assume people are looking for the short video on Vine of Rihanna saying "because." (Trust me,this is a thing.)
But with that caveat, here's the pie chart of these categories.
Just look at how many of the searches are around music and lyrics! Along with language questions, that's more than 50 percent of Google's suggestions.
I can't quite tell you why, but I found this fascinating.
Some of the particular searches yield bizarre results, too.
Take: "because bureaucracies are so rule-based they." This turns out to be a quote from an old AP Government exam! For some reason, students (I assume) were typing this quote into Google. Or maybe it was teachers trying to catch students? I'm still not sure.
Or another weird one: "because zombies can't jump." There is a game called "Zombies Can't Jump." But there's no reason to Google "because zombies can't jump." At least no reason that enough people would have that they'd show up on Google's radar.
A last interesting example: "because pronunciation." As a native American English speaker, I don't really think about the fact that Americans tend to say "because" as "becuz."But people learning English find it confusing, at least according to this video, which is the top search result.
What's the point of these kind of detailed analyses of individual searches? Well, Google (and to a lesser extent Bing), define the informational boundaries during most people's first step in knowledge gathering. Their suggestions both reflect and influence what people know and want to know about a topic.
There is a complex web of Internet and pop culture, education and work, that surround even a simple word like "because."
Here's the full list, along with my codings.
[{"String": "because aliens", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because abbreviation", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because alwayscreate was specified", "Category": "Coding"}, {"String": "because asl", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because beatles", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because beatles lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because bags", "Category": "Product"}, {"String": "because bureaucracies are so rule-based they", "Category": "Homework"}, {"String": "because china", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because comma", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because cats", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because cats iphone case", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because dave clark five", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because dennis is a bastard man", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because definition", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because days come and go", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because environment variable django_settings_module is undefined", "Category": "Coding"}, {"String": "because elliott smith", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because every mother matters", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because everyone else is boring", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because french", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because foundation", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because fitness", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because freedom", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because grammar", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because good is dumb", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because guitar chords", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because god is real", "Category": "Product"}, {"String": "because he lives", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because he lives lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because he lives chords", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because he lives hymn", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because i got high", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "afroman because i got high lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because i said so", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because i said i would", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because justice matters", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because justice matters rise", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because japan", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because jesus", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because knowledge is power", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because kids count conference", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because knowledge is power gi joe", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because korean", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because life is short and you are hot", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because lyrics beatles", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because lee hi lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because massage", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because music", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because music is my heartbeat shoes", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because maybe", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because nice matters", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because not only but also", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because nobody likes bras", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because ninjas are too busy", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because of you", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because of winn dixie", "Category": "Product"}, {"String": "because of you lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because of who you are", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because part of speech", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because preposition", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because punctuation", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because pronunciation", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because quotes", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "p because q", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because quitters quit", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because quotes tumblr", "Category": "Quote"}, {"String": "because racecar", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because reasons", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because resources are scarce", "Category": "Homework"}, {"String": "because rihanna vine", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because synonym", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because shanna said so", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because song", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because sunggyu lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because the night", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because the internet", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because the night lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because thesaurus", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because u loved me", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because u loved me lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because usage", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because used in a sentence", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because vine", "Category": "Meme"}, {"String": "because vs since", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because vs due to", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because vs that", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "because we can", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because we can lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because we can tour", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because we want to", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because x", "Category": "Language"}, {"String": "as much because x as because y", "Category": "Homework"}, {"String": "because xm", "Category": "Organization"}, {"String": "because xlive.dll", "Category": "Coding"}, {"String": "because you loved me", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because you loved me lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because you live lyrics", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because you loved me mp3", "Category": "Music/Lyrics"}, {"String": "because zombies can't jump", "Category": "Misc"}, {"String": "because zinc has nearly the same", "Category": "Homework"}, {"String": "because zlib1.dll", "Category": "Coding"}, {"String": "because zombies are coming dear", "Category": "Meme"}]
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1,384,906,638 | 2013-11-20 00:17:18+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1522]} | {} | PRESS DIGEST - China - Nov 20 | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/press-digest-china-nov-20-001718272.html | Reuters | http://www.reuters.com/ | Nov 20 (Reuters) - Chinese newspapers available in Beijing and Shanghai carried the following stories on Wednesday. Reuters has not checked the stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
PEOPLE'S DAILY
- The ruling Communist Party of China set up a special group to go around the country to promote the leadership's latest reform plan, seen as the boldest reforms planned in three decades.
CHINA DAILY
- The northeastern city of Harbin in Heilongjiang province has been hit by its heaviest snowfalls since records began after snow fell for nearly 60 hours, leaving snow piled as high as 50 millimetres in some areas. The storm caused four deaths in neighbouring Jilin province but no casualties were reported in Heilongjiang.
SHANGHAI SECURITIES NEWS
- The plan announced by the Chinese leadership this month to quicken the pace of economic reforms, including stepping up the pace to make the Chinese currency yuan fully convertible, heralds a new phase of active cross-the-border capital flows in and out of China, economists say.
- The Shanghai International Energy Trading Centre, a unit of the Shanghai Commodity Exchange, will start operations on Friday, the latest step taken by the exchange to prepare the launch of China's first crude oil futures, possibly in the first half of next year.
CHINA SECURITIES JOURNAL
- More and more Chinese are now trading bitcoins, with the daily volume of Chinese trading even exceeding that on the professional platforms of Mt.Gox and BitStamp on Monday, statistics issued by Bitcoinity.org showed.
- Despite a consolidation of China's stock market on Tuesday, stock index futures continued trading in premiums against spots, indicating optimism sparked by the country's latest bold reform plan still prevails the markets.
SECURITIES TIMES
- Yields of China's benchmark 10-year government bonds have hit multi-year highs recently due to the central bank's tight liquidity stance and are likely to rise above the main 5-percent resistance soon.
CHINA BUSINESS NEWS
- Some Chinese banks are set to suffer losses in the looming bailout plans of Suntech Power, with policy bank China Development Bank possibly losing 1.6 billion yuan ($262 million).
SHANGHAI DAILY
- Anhui province is experimenting with letting farmers mortgage or transfer control of the publicly owned land they farm as China tries to finds ways to create a land market. However, the farmers will not be granted ownership of the land.
For Hong Kong and South China newspapers see..... |
1,384,909,200 | 2013-11-20 01:00:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [5895]} | {} | Ben Bernanke Just Gave A Superb Speech That Explained All Of His Biggest Decisions | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ben-bernanke-just-gave-super-010037966.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/ Tim Chong
At theAnnual Dinner of the National Economists Club, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech that walked through the reasoning for all of the Fed's big actions since the financial crisis.
He explained why the Fed has used unconventional monetary policy in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The ultimate goals of these policies has been to shape the public's policy expectations to convince it that it would keep policy loose for an extended period of time.
Here are the key themes he talked about:
Forward Guidance
Bernanke emphasized the importance of clearly articulating the future of Fed policy using forward guidance. This was particularly true after the great recession when the Fed's usual policy tool, short-term interest rates, had limited effectiveness due to the zero-lower bound. The FOMC attempted to lower long-term rates by communicating to the market that short-term rates would be low for a long period of time. This was the goal of forward guidance.
At first, the Fed did this in a qualitative sense, but eventually started using more date-specific guidance to communicate to the market. However, this guidance also had its own limitation:
Although the date-based forward guidance appears to have affected the public's expectations as desired, it did not explain how future policy would be affected by changes in the economic outlook--an important limitation. Indeed, the date in the guidance was pushed out twice in 2012--first to late 2014 and then to mid-2015--leaving the public unsure about whether and under what circumstances further changes to the guidance might occur.
To offset this, the Fed recently moved to a more state-contingent guidance, noting that the Fed would not consider raising rates while unemployment was above 6.5% and inflation was near 2%. Bernanke emphasized these were thresholds, not triggers, meaning that hitting the targets would not automatically cause rate increases but were a necessary level for rates to rise.
Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAPs)
The Fed also implemented a new, unconventional monetary policy tool that had the same goal of lowering long-term rates, but did so in a different manner. Instead of credibly informing the market that short-term rates would be low for a longer period of time, LSAPs reduced long-term rates by purchasing securities. This reduces the supply and drives up the value of them, lowering rates. Bernanke lays this dual strategy of forward guidance and LSAPs clearly in his speech:
[F]orward rate guidance affects longer-term interest rates primarily by influencing investors' expectations of future short-term interest rates. LSAPs, in contrast, most directly affect term premiums... As both forward rate guidance and LSAPs affect longer-term interest rates, the use of these tools allows monetary policy to be effective even when short-term interest rates are close to zero
The FOMC also has attempted to credibly communicate to the market "the criteria that would inform future decisions about the program." The goal of this was to keep market expectations in line with the Fed's future plan of actions. To do this, Bernanke laid out the baseline state of the economy at which the Fed would begin to reduce its asset purchases. In June, the chairman said that if the market continued to improve at a moderate pace as it had been, then it would begin tapering later in the year and conclude its asset purchases in mid-2014.
Bernanke emphasized that this was not a pre-determined plan, but was data-dependent. The market didn't listen:
Market participants may have taken the communication in June as indicating a general lessening of the Committee's commitment to maintain a highly accommodative stance of policy in pursuit of its objectives. In particular, it appeared that the FOMC's forward guidance for the federal funds rate had become less effective after June, with market participants pulling forward the time at which they expected the Committee to start raising rates, in a manner inconsistent with the guidance
The market priced in a September taper, despite the fact that it would depend on how the economic data would unfold in the ensuing months. This was not what the Fed intended to communicate in June and caused tightened financial conditions in the housing market. When the data came in below the baseline level that Bernanke laid out in June, the Fed did not reduce its asset purchases. As Bernanke says, this was "fully consistent with the earlier guidance."
Since then, market expectations have realigned with the Fed with the market more focused on the data and applying the Fed's framework to it to predict future Fed policy:
Although the FOMC's decision came as a surprise to some market participants, it appears to have strengthened the credibility of the Committee's forward rate guidance; in particular, following the decision, longer-term rates fell and expectations of short-term rates derived from financial market prices showed, and continue to show, a pattern more consistent with the guidance.
This speech succinctly summed up all of the Fed's actions under Bernanke. It used forward guidance and LSAPs to attempt to lower long-term rates, because short-term rates were pushed up against the zero lower bound. It has become more transparent and attempted to clearly communicate the framework for its future policy decisions to credibly convince the market that policy will remain loose for a considerable period of time.
As Bernanke said at the beginning of his speech, "t he public's expectations about future monetary policy actions matter today because those expectations have important effects on current financial conditions, which in turn affect output, employment, and inflation over time." This has been the ultimate goal of his time as chairman.
Read Bernanke's whole speech here >
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1,384,910,933 | 2013-11-20 01:28:53+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [186, 990, 1748, 2465, 2715, 2747, 3131, 3338]} | {"Bitcoin": [11]} | NJ settles Bitcoin case vs. online gaming co. | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/nj-settles-bitcoin-case-vs-224904449.html | Associated Press | https://apnews.com/ | NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- An online video game company accused of infecting thousands of computers with malicious software and using that access to illegally mine for the electronic currency Bitcoin has agreed to pay a $1 million settlement, the New Jersey attorney general's office said Tuesday. Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman announced the settlement with E-Sports Entertainment, which bills itself as the "largest competitive video gaming community in North America," according to court documents. The company charges users $6.95 a month to play popular games including Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2 alone or against one another on what they said is a platform that does not allow cheating. In order to play, users must download E-Sports software onto their computers. When downloaded, the software has administrative access to the computer. It was through that software that two company employees, a co-founder and a software engineer, installed code allowing them to mine for Bitcoins without the users' knowledge, authorities said. The Commack, N.Y. -based company's co-founder, Eric Thunberg, and software engineer, Sean Hunczak, were involved in the settlement. In a statement, Thunberg said the company cooperated fully with the investigation and that it will "take every possible step" to secure user privacy. It said the responsible employee had been fired. The company said it doesn't agree with the attorney general's account of the matter and the signed settlement makes it clear the company has not admitted to any wrongdoing. Thunberg said a press release from the U. S. Attorney about the settlement "represents a deep misunderstanding of the facts of the case, the nature of our business and the technology in question." Bitcoin is a cybercurrency that is relatively anonymous. They are created and exchanged independent of any government or bank. Some retailers allow the money to be used, and the currency can be converted into cash after being deposited into so-called wallets. Story continues Hoffman said E-Sports seized control of about 14,000 computers in New Jersey and nationwide. "These defendants illegally hijacked thousands of people's personal computers without their knowledge or consent and in doing so gained the ability to monitor their activities, mine for virtual currency that had real dollar value, and otherwise invade and damage their computers," Hoffman said in a statement. Hoffman said computers were mined for Bitcoins in April, and the software was set up to do so only when users were away from the machine. The software could determine if a person was active by the movements of the computer's mouse. Hoffman said Hunczak created four wallets for the mined Bitcoins. Hunczak converted the Bitcoins into about $3,500 and had them deposited into his bank account. As part of the agreement, the company must not provide customers with services that are downloaded without their consent, and agreed to put in place a comprehensive privacy and data security program. The company must only pay $325,000 of the $1 million fine if it complies with all terms for the next 10 years. Bitcoin and other electronic monies are under increased scrutiny. At a hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security on Governmental Affairs, federal law enforcement officials told lawmakers that Bitcoin and other companies should receive greater scrutiny from financial regulators and other authorities. In an August memo, New York state Financial Services Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky said virtual currencies are the "wild west" for criminals including drug dealers and the under-the-radar transactions could threaten national security. |
1,384,918,332 | 2013-11-20 03:32:12+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [21, 813, 1914, 1996, 2038, 2057]} | {"Bitcoin": [60]} | Gaming Company Fined $1 Million After Using Players To Mine Bitcoin | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gaming-company-fined-1-million-033212157.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/Jim Urquhart
Bitcoin enthusiast Mike Caldwell poses at his office in Sandy, Utah, September 17, 2013.
A gaming software company behind anti-cheating software for the popularCounterstrikegame has been fined $1 million after a software update secretlyadded code that would mine for bitcoinwithout the users' knowledge, Robert McMillan of Wired reports.
About 14,000 customers of E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA) were infected by the code, which mined about 30 bitcoins over a period of two weeks. The company blamed a rogue engineer for the malicious code.
The software was designed to mine the cryptocurrency onlywhen people weren't active on their computers, according to Forbes' Kashmir Hill. But one gamer noticed his computer was working much harder than usual and warned others of a possible Bitcoin botnet in April.
“These defendants illegally hijacked thousands of people’s personal computers without their knowledge or consent, and in doing so gained the ability to monitor their activities, mine for virtual currency that had real dollar value, and otherwise invade and damage their computers," said Acting N.J. Attorney General John Hoffman,in a press release.
From Wired:
Though they reached a settlement, ESEA and the New Jersey AG disagree over the facts of the case. The AG’s office says that company co-founder Eric Thunberg and software engineer Sean Hunczak were both involved in the scam. In astatement posted to its website, ESEA said the software was the work of a single engineer, presumably Hunczak, adding that the “press release issued by the Attorney General about our settlement represents a deep misunderstanding of the facts of the case, the nature of our business, and the technology in question.”
The company must pay $325,000 of the fine upfront, but will be required to pay the rest if they are caught misbehaving in the next ten years.
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1,384,918,332 | 2013-11-20 03:32:12+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [21, 813, 1914, 1996, 2038, 2057]} | {"Bitcoin": [60]} | Gaming Company Fined $1 Million After Using Players To Mine Bitcoin | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/gaming-company-fined-1-million-033212157.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/Jim Urquhart
Bitcoin enthusiast Mike Caldwell poses at his office in Sandy, Utah, September 17, 2013.
A gaming software company behind anti-cheating software for the popularCounterstrikegame has been fined $1 million after a software update secretlyadded code that would mine for bitcoinwithout the users' knowledge, Robert McMillan of Wired reports.
About 14,000 customers of E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA) were infected by the code, which mined about 30 bitcoins over a period of two weeks. The company blamed a rogue engineer for the malicious code.
The software was designed to mine the cryptocurrency onlywhen people weren't active on their computers, according to Forbes' Kashmir Hill. But one gamer noticed his computer was working much harder than usual and warned others of a possible Bitcoin botnet in April.
“These defendants illegally hijacked thousands of people’s personal computers without their knowledge or consent, and in doing so gained the ability to monitor their activities, mine for virtual currency that had real dollar value, and otherwise invade and damage their computers," said Acting N.J. Attorney General John Hoffman,in a press release.
From Wired:
Though they reached a settlement, ESEA and the New Jersey AG disagree over the facts of the case. The AG’s office says that company co-founder Eric Thunberg and software engineer Sean Hunczak were both involved in the scam. In astatement posted to its website, ESEA said the software was the work of a single engineer, presumably Hunczak, adding that the “press release issued by the Attorney General about our settlement represents a deep misunderstanding of the facts of the case, the nature of our business, and the technology in question.”
The company must pay $325,000 of the fine upfront, but will be required to pay the rest if they are caught misbehaving in the next ten years.
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1,384,950,480 | 2013-11-20 12:28:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [5570, 5626]} | {} | 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-things-know-opening-bell-122829468.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Good morning! Here's what you need to know.
• Most markets in Asia closed lower Wednesday. Japan's Nikkei fell -0.33%. Korea's Kospi was off -0.71%. Chinese indices defied the trend, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng up 0.18% and the Shanghai Composite up 0.62%. European markets are lower across the board, with London's FTSE off most at -0.28%. U.S. futures are pointing lower.
• Ben Bernankegave a speech last nightat the annual National Economists Club dinner in which he laid out how the Fed has sought to align market expectations with imminent Fed actions. He said that although the market completely misread the Fed's intentions at the June FOMC meeting and tightened, the Fed's subsequent decision to leave its bond buying program unchanged at the following FOMC meeting despite even more signs of an improving economy ended up strengthening its credibility by "surprising" the market again. " When, ultimately, asset purchases do slow," he said, "it will likely be because the economy has progressed sufficiently for the Committee to rely more heavily on its rate policies, the associated forward guidance, and its substantial continued holdings of securities to maintain progress toward maximum employment and to achieve price stability....T he target for the federal funds rate is likely to remain near zero for a considerable time after the asset purchases end, perhaps well after the unemployment threshold is crossed and at least until the preponderance of the data supports the beginning of the removal of policy accommodation."
• Japan's trade deficit unexpectedly widened in October as growth in imports outpaced robust increases in exports to the U.S. and China,Reuters says. While a weakening Japanese yen has lifted exports, it's increased the cost in yen terms for imports, especially of oil and natural gas meant to offset declines in power from shutting down Fukushima. Japan has now seen 16-straight months of deficits.BI's Joe Weisenthal saysyou're being misled about Abenomics if you're fixated on exports. "...if your conception of Abenomics — Japan's big economic experiment which has seen a weakened yen as part of aggressive monetary policy — is that it's just about making exports more competitive, you're totally wrong. It's not a beggar thy number/currency war move. If Abenomics is to work — and there are signs that it is — it works by stoking inflation expectations so that people domestically spend rather than horde cash."
• The minutes from the latest Bank of England meeting are out, and analysts say its policy making committee remains in "wait and see" mode. "The way out of the current fragile recovery is not around the corner and policymakers don't feel the pressure to reduce the accommodation in the current uncertain environment,"the FT quotes Newedge's Annalisa Piazza. "The 7% unemployment rate is not seen as a trigger of the first rate hike as policymakers are willing to look at the broader picture to judge when the time for less accommodation has arrived. In the meanwhile, the expected spike in inflation (due to rising utility prices) is not considered as a threat for price stability in the medium term."
• We've got a busy day in economic data and releases. At 8:30 am ET we get both October consumer price inflation, with a consensus for core inflation to rise 0.1% from the previous month and 1.7% year over year; and retail sales, with total sales expected to advance 0.1% and non-auto-and-gas sales expected to rise by 0.2%. Then at 10 am we get September business inventories, which are expected to climb 0.3%; and October existing home sales, which are expected to have slowed to 5.14 million units at a seasonally adjusted annual rate. At 2 pm we get minutes from the October FOMC meeting. Plus New York Fed President William Dudley speaks at 10 am, and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard speaks at 12:10 pm.
• JC Penney reported losses of $1.81/share missing consensus of $1.72/share. Sames-store sales figures were down 4.8%. But shares are moving higher pre-market on guidance. Deere earnings beat at $2.11 versus $1.89 expected, while revenues came in in-line.
• The Wall Street Journal's Scott Patterson and Andrew Ackerman reportthere are new hiccups in implementing the Volcker rule designed to limit proprietary trading at financial firms. Some regulators at the SEC and CFTC are now "arguing [the rule] is too soft on banks," which threatens to "further delay [the rule's] implementation beyond the year-end deadline set by the Obama administration."
• Duncan Weldon explains in a new blog post this morninghow short-term thinking among corporate brass has led to rising inequality. He first quotes from a recent piece byReuters' James Saft: "[In the 1970's], companies invested about 15 times more in new equipment and ventures than they returned to shareholders via dividends. Now the ratio is less than two. As recently as the 1990s, this number was as high as six. Why? The change toward ever greater executive pay, doled out in share options which are highly sensitive to short-term stock price movements, has changed how CEOs behave." In other words, Weldon writes, "We have stumbled into a system whereby corporations are often run not for their own long term benefit but for the benefit of top staff.As Mariana Mazzucato has argued with are all too often rewarding value extraction rather than value creation."
• A gaming company has beenfined $1 million by the state of New Jerseyafter it secretly installed code on users' computers that turned their computers into Bitcoin mining units. The firm blames a rogue employee. Bitcoin prices fell sharply overnight and now stand at $470.
• California saw its first monthly increase in realtor licenses since early 2007 in August,Calculated Risk's Bill McBride reports. The figure remains 32.4% from its peak and is off 3.3% year-over-year. Broker's licensing rates are still declining, albeit slowly, and are just 8.4% from their peak. "This might be the bottom (or near the bottom) for real estate licensees in California, but so far there is no sign of a new bubble in real estate agents!" he says.
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1,384,952,400 | 2013-11-20 13:00:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [166, 231, 570, 647, 871, 1082, 1167, 2082]} | {"Bitcoin": [38]} | Global Leadership Institute to Accept Bitcoin | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-leadership-institute-accept-bitcoin-130000525.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | PHOENIX, AZ--(Marketwired - Nov 20, 2013) - Global Leadership Institute, formerly known as Cephas Holding Corp (PINKSHEETS:CEHC), today announced that it will accept Bitcoin as payment for future educational products and services.
Bitcoin is the first decentralized electronic currency not controlled by a single organization or government. It's a virtual form of currency that can be used to make payments over the Internet with transaction fees or involving a financial institution. It is used by people all over the world who are trading millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin every day with no middle man and no credit card companies.
Accepting Bitcoin is an example of GLI following the innovative model that it endorses in in its educational offerings. Additionally, some emerging markets that the company is targeting may be better suited to conduct transactions in Bitcoin than in different currencies.
The company also believes that as it embarks on building an intellectual property library in 2014 it will be positioned to enhance monetization of these assets by accepting Bitcoin for articles, video classes, and other downloadable media.
"We forecast that Bitcoin could allow us to reach additional markets and potentially change how education services are bought and sold in the developing world," added Peter Klamka Chairman.
For more information on the company's educational products, visitwww.gli360.com.
This press release includes certain statements forward-looking in nature and that involve a number of uncertainties and risks. Such forward-looking statements are within the meaning of that term in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based on the company's current expectations and projections regarding future events, which are based on available information. The forward-looking statements in this press release may also include statements relating to the company's anticipated new developments, including accepting Bitcoin for its products and services which are currently in development, business prospects, financial performance, strategies and similar matters. The company disclaims any obligation to update its forward-looking statements, except as required by law. |
1,384,981,200 | 2013-11-20 21:00:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [7146]} | {} | On Wall Street, ‘Tick Size’ Does Matter | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-tick-size-does-210000083.html | The Fiscal Times | http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/ | Market structure debates can sometimes feel so arcane that you’d be forgiven if you preferred to train your attention instead on watching paint dry. But these debates can be important – as is the case with one proposal that isgaining traction.
I’m talking about the suggestion by the Equity Capital Formation Task Force to try and spur more trading in small-company stocks by moving away from “decimalization” – having stocks trade in one-penny increments on exchanges – and going back to the days when the spreads between the bid and ask prices was wider.
Up until the late 1990s, trading was pretty straightforward – you’d want to buy 100 shares of XYZ, and you’d be quoted a figure of perhaps $37 1/4, or $37 3/8; if you wanted to sell, the price might be $37 or $37 1/8. The idea is pretty familiar to anyone who’s ever changed their greenbacks for a foreign currency while on holiday: Not only do you pay a commission, but your rate is set up in such a way that you’ll have to buy high and sell low.
In the late 1990s, the SEC added trading in sixteenths – or “teenies,” as they instantly were dubbed by trading floor denizens – and then, in 2001, came decimalization, with the idea being that a smaller “spread” between the bid and the asked prices would make trading more efficient and less costly.
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Decimalization always hadits detractors, although it’s hard to draw a definite link between the pricing change and the problems that critics identify. Yes, price points move more rapidly, meaning that to capture the benefit of low costs, some investors may have to trade more frequently than they did before. But is that frequent movement in prices the result of the change in market structure or the arrival of new players in the trading universe, such as high-frequency trading firms?
Moreover, even if someone has to trade a few more times to complete the purchase or sale of a block of shares, the fact remains that those trades are likely to have less of an impact on the market, meaning that they can complete the trade before the price gets ahead of them. With a minimum spread of 12.5 cents, for instance, purchasing a big block of shares might have been simpler but more costly, showing up immediately in the price. When a price can only go up or down by a penny, there are opportunities for others to jump in along the way.
There’s no such thing as a perfect market structure, and there are plenty of problems and unresolved questions about the way stock trading functions today. We’ve got dark pools and high-frequency trading, which are in the midst of reshaping the market environment in ways we don’t yet understand."Connectivity issues"that spark trading shutdowns have become frequent enough to spark jokes in the Twitterverse about rogue squirrels nibbling away on cables. Then there are big snafus, such as the one that wreaked havoc during Twitter’s IPO debut.
Regulators aren’t keeping up. Years after the Dodd-Frank Act was passed, it remains unclear how the new rules banning proprietary trading by banks will affect such grey areas as market making, in which financial institutions take positions so that they can accommodate current and future trading needs of their clients.
Nonetheless, forthe Equity Capital Formation Task Forcethe market structure issue on which we all should be focusing our attention remains the minimum “tick size,” or the spread between the bid and asked price.
This is the organization that has been behind some other initiatives, including crowdfunding start-up companies, that it believes will help spark capital formation. By changing the market structure for smaller companies, the group expects that trading activity will increase, market-makers will return to the business of buying and selling smaller stocks (because it will be more profitable) and the enhanced liquidity will attract more coverage from research analysts. That chain of events would make it easier overall for small companies to raise capital in the public markets, or so the argument goes.
Now, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t obstacles confronting smaller companies that want to be public. Yes, it’s hard to get research coverage and to convince a trading firm to make a market in your stock. But I’m not sure that changing the market structure is the way to address them. The problem is far more fundamental.
“If there was money to be made trading old sneakers, Wall Street would be involved,” points out Mike Driscoll, a veteran of Wall Street trading floors, who has seen the evolution of trading from eighths to “teenies” to pennies. “Providing research coverage and making money for those [smaller] companies just doesn’t make money for big banks, and smaller institutions are so lean right now that they can’t afford it.” Nor, he argues, will changing the spreads alter that fact.
Indeed, what Driscoll, now teaching finance at Adelphi University and completing his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, witnessed firsthand on the trading floor was that decimalization made it easier for his clients – including the mutual funds that the Equity Capital Formation Task Force claims suffered most – to accumulate or sell large positions in small stocks. “The markets were tighter and more liquid.”
Related: JPMorgan Deal Won’t Close the Books on Mortgage Fraud
There’s nothing wrong withtrying out new trading systemsto see if they’ll work, but the reality is that top-down initiatives rarelydowork when it comes to the financial markets – and this is one area in which that kind of top-down intervention isn’t really called for, since we’re not talking about protecting the investor or the integrity of capital markets.
The Equity Capital Formation Task Force might be better off focusing on the broader challenges to economic growth (which make businesses and investors risk averse) or to ensuring that new market regulations are structured in as predictable and rational way as possible, to minimize uncertainty among the firms that have the resources to step into the void and commit resources to the world of small and micro-cap companies.
Ultimately, if both the buy side and the sell side on Wall Street don’t think that they’re likely to make money from this space, they won’t commit resources to it. Citigroup (NYSE: C) is interested in test-driving a system under which the tick size of less liquid stocks would be increased, but it will surely lose interest if the pilot program doesn’t prove profitable. (In particular, Citi won’t continue doing so if it finds itself at war with high-frequency traders trying to insist on their right to trade in pennies or even fractions of a penny.)
At some point, if a real gap emerges and there is a strong demand for a better service, someone on a trading desk somewhere will spot it. That person will set up his or her own firm to exploit the opportunity by making markets in illiquid stocks. It has happened before, and it will happen again.That’swhat groups like the Equity Capital Formation Task Force should be looking for and supporting.
Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
• Why Regulating Bitcoin Is Like Herding Cats
• The Dark Side of the North Dakota Oil Boom
• 15 Awful Things More Popular Than Congress |
1,384,985,220 | 2013-11-20 22:07:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [3322]} | {} | Juicing Is Terrible, But Juice Is Great | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/juicing-terrible-juice-great-220700125.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Today Slate's Katy Waldman wrote a great posttaking down the juice cleanse. She said drinking nothing but raw fruit and vegetable juice for several days on end, while touted as healthy, will leave you starving and unhappy. Not to mention everyone who does it acts elitist.
But it's important to clarify that it's not drinking juice that leaves you miserable — it's drinking only juice. (Here, we're talking about the vegetable juice that's pressed in a juicer and either served straight from it or bottled and sold in stores, not your typical orange or cranberry juice.)
When most Americans are struggling with their diets already, a story about why juice is bad might scare them away from it entirely. This would be bad, because juicing, in moderation, has an incredibly obvious, important benefit.
It helps you eat more vegetables.
As simple as it sounds, eating vegetables is a big struggle for many people. They're rich sources of essential vitamins and minerals, and fill you up faster on fewer calories. The Harvard School of Public Health says the daily recommended number of servings variesfrom five to thirteen daily. That comes in at 2 1/2 cups to 6/12 cups per day, depending on an individual's caloric intake. (The figure also includes servings of fruit.)
Most people, however, can't even fit in a few servings. Ask your friends and family and they'll probably tell you that spinach and kale are okay, but not as delicious as pizza or a burger.
Check out this map of the number of times people in the United States are eating vegetables every day:
CDC.gov
Not very often.
Add a few handfuls of kale to your pasta.Mix Spinach into your morning smoothie. Eat carrots instead of crackers.Adopt an elaborate 30-day plan to fit more into your diet. The tips and tricks to get more are everywhere. We're resorting to mind games.
With juicing, however, there's no need to think about it that hard. Drinking one glass of juice can bring you close to your daily recommended intake of vegetables in about five minutes. In New York, you can enter any convenience store or deli with pretty good chance there will be either a juice bar or some kind of bottled juice for sale inside.
Look at how many fruits and vegetables are in one bottle of Evolution juice, sold at Starbucks:
Business Insider
This is the back of a bottle of "Sweet Greens" Evolution juice.
Drinking that is basically eating a salad. There's no fiber in juice, but you still get all the vitamins and minerals from the plants. And for people trying to adopt a better diet, no one should be discouraged from consuming something that's so nutrient dense.
Juice cleansing is unnecessary, like Slate pointed out. The insane cost, unhealthy mindset, and annoying metamorphosis into a status symbol are definite problems. Their popularity shows that we tend to jump on board whenever promised with a quick fix.
So here's a quick fix. Drink a juice every once in a while. In terms of total servings of vegetables consumed daily — alongside your regular food intake, of course — there's no easier, faster, or better way to up your numbers. And being efficient is nice; it's why we order lunch from Seamless or pay bills online.
More From Business Insider
• 7 Foods We Should Be Eating But Aren't
• STOP JUICING: It's Not Healthy, And The Mentality Is Dangerous
• Bitcoin Just Waterfalled |
1,384,985,220 | 2013-11-20 22:07:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [3322]} | {} | Juicing Is Terrible, But Juice Is Great | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/juicing-terrible-juice-great-220700125.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Today Slate's Katy Waldman wrote a great posttaking down the juice cleanse. She said drinking nothing but raw fruit and vegetable juice for several days on end, while touted as healthy, will leave you starving and unhappy. Not to mention everyone who does it acts elitist.
But it's important to clarify that it's not drinking juice that leaves you miserable — it's drinking only juice. (Here, we're talking about the vegetable juice that's pressed in a juicer and either served straight from it or bottled and sold in stores, not your typical orange or cranberry juice.)
When most Americans are struggling with their diets already, a story about why juice is bad might scare them away from it entirely. This would be bad, because juicing, in moderation, has an incredibly obvious, important benefit.
It helps you eat more vegetables.
As simple as it sounds, eating vegetables is a big struggle for many people. They're rich sources of essential vitamins and minerals, and fill you up faster on fewer calories. The Harvard School of Public Health says the daily recommended number of servings variesfrom five to thirteen daily. That comes in at 2 1/2 cups to 6/12 cups per day, depending on an individual's caloric intake. (The figure also includes servings of fruit.)
Most people, however, can't even fit in a few servings. Ask your friends and family and they'll probably tell you that spinach and kale are okay, but not as delicious as pizza or a burger.
Check out this map of the number of times people in the United States are eating vegetables every day:
CDC.gov
Not very often.
Add a few handfuls of kale to your pasta.Mix Spinach into your morning smoothie. Eat carrots instead of crackers.Adopt an elaborate 30-day plan to fit more into your diet. The tips and tricks to get more are everywhere. We're resorting to mind games.
With juicing, however, there's no need to think about it that hard. Drinking one glass of juice can bring you close to your daily recommended intake of vegetables in about five minutes. In New York, you can enter any convenience store or deli with pretty good chance there will be either a juice bar or some kind of bottled juice for sale inside.
Look at how many fruits and vegetables are in one bottle of Evolution juice, sold at Starbucks:
Business Insider
This is the back of a bottle of "Sweet Greens" Evolution juice.
Drinking that is basically eating a salad. There's no fiber in juice, but you still get all the vitamins and minerals from the plants. And for people trying to adopt a better diet, no one should be discouraged from consuming something that's so nutrient dense.
Juice cleansing is unnecessary, like Slate pointed out. The insane cost, unhealthy mindset, and annoying metamorphosis into a status symbol are definite problems. Their popularity shows that we tend to jump on board whenever promised with a quick fix.
So here's a quick fix. Drink a juice every once in a while. In terms of total servings of vegetables consumed daily — alongside your regular food intake, of course — there's no easier, faster, or better way to up your numbers. And being efficient is nice; it's why we order lunch from Seamless or pay bills online.
More From Business Insider
• 7 Foods We Should Be Eating But Aren't
• STOP JUICING: It's Not Healthy, And The Mentality Is Dangerous
• Bitcoin Just Waterfalled |
1,385,010,900 | 2013-11-21 05:15:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [38, 222, 337, 728, 805, 929, 1332, 1586, 1733, 1937, 2489, 2594, 2661, 2900, 2984], "BTC": [1323, 1953]} | {"Bitcoin": [15]} | Caveat Emptor: Bitcoin Reaches Mania Status as Price Swings Nearly 50% | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/caveat-emptor-bitcoin-reaches-mania-051500896.html | DailyFX | http://www.dailyfx.com/ | Back in April,when we first discussed Bitcoin’s meteoric rise(and ensuing fall), it was still a relatively niche phenomenon: internet-savvy individuals or those working in finance or technology may have been familiar with Bitcoin, but not many others.
It was that initial volatility that sparked the public’s love-hate relationship with Bitcoin in 2013. Since then, the digital currency has become quite prevalent. The discussion center moved from the backwaters of the internet (chatrooms, forums) to the mainstream media (TV,radio). Promoters of the alternative currency have praised its independence from governments across the globe, while detractors have pointed to its short history as evidence that the ground supporting Bitcoin may not be as strong as price is leading on.
Regardless if you think Bitcoin is the flavor of the week or the seedling of something bigger, there is one undeniable truth that inherently limits Bitcoin’s broader appeal beyond a speculative investment vehicle in the near-term: it is far too volatile.
Volatility has spawned in a very dramatic fashion afterkey events surrounding the Federal Reserve earlierin the month. Over the past few days, prices have been on a ride: at the beginning of November, prices traded just over $200; this week, a new all-time high just above $900 was set:
BTC/USD (Bitcoins in US Dollars) H4 Chart– November 1 to Present
Chart created by Christopher Vecchio, Currency Analyst usingClark Moody
These gains are equally impressive and uncommon – the exchange rate nearly quadrupled in four weeks. And if you invested in 1 Bitcoin way back when its original price was $0.01, you briefly saw a +89,999% gain this week. It’s not a jump to say that the original holders of Bitcoin have benefited. Some of the early comers may have viewed the explosive price rise the past two weeks to take profit, as the past 48-hours have been unbelievably scary for recent entrants into the Bitcoin market:
BTC/USD H1 Chart –November 16to Present
Chart created by Christopher Vecchio, Currency Analyst usingClark Moody
Price collapsed Monday night/Tuesday morning around 20:00 EST/01:00 GMT, from $900 to as low as $460 – a -40% slide. Consider that the most volatile major currency pair over the same time period was theNZDUSD, and it only had an absolute range of +/-1.82%. Comparatively, 1 week historical volatility for the most widely traded currency, theEURUSD, as of November 18 was +3.97%. These conditions do not support the case for Bitcoin as an alternative store of wealth.
Consider the following scenario:
- on Monday, you purchased 1 Bitcoin as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke applauded some of Bitcoin’s merits;initial outlay is $750.
- at the time of writing today, your investment would be worth -19.2% less at $606.
A stable exchange rate is essential for a widely accepted and used currency, and that’s clearly not the case with Bitcoin. While short-term traders want volatility, the amount of volatility seen in Bitcoin is undesirable for risk neutral and risk averse investors, even those worrying aboutthe ongoing central bank stimulus wars.
--- Written by Christopher Vecchio, Currency Analyst
To contact Christopher Vecchio, e-mailcvecchio@dailyfx.com
Follow himon Twitter at @CVecchioFX
To be added to Christopher’s e-mail distribution list,please fill out this form
DailyFXprovides forex news and technical analysis on the trends that influence the global currency markets.Learn forex trading with a free practice account and trading charts fromFXCM. |
1,385,013,267 | 2013-11-21 05:54:27+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [251, 2668, 2709, 2726]} | {"Bitcoin": [82]} | University of Nicosia in Cyprus to be the First University in the World to Accept Bitcoin; Offers Master's Degree in Digital Currency | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/university-nicosia-cyprus-first-university-055427560.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | NICOSIA, CYPRUS--(Marketwired - Nov 21, 2013) - TheUniversity of Nicosia("UNic"), the largest private university in Cyprus and one of the largest English language universities in the Euro-Mediterranean region, announced today that it is now accepting Bitcoin for payment of tuition and other fees, making it the first accredited university in the world to accept the increasingly popular digital currency.
Additionally, UNic is also launching in Spring 2014 the firstMaster of Science Degree in Digital Currency, which is designed to help financial services and business professionals, entrepreneurs, government officials and public administrators better understand the technical underpinnings of digital currency, how it will likely interact with existing monetary and financial systems and what opportunities exist for innovation in digital currency systems.
"We are acutely aware that digital currency is an inevitable technical development that will lead to significant innovation in online commerce, financial systems, international payments and remittances and global economic development. Digital currency will create more efficient services and will serve as a mechanism for spreading financial services to under-banked regions of the world," said Dr. Christos Vlachos, member of the Council of the University of Nicosia and the University's Chief Financial Officer. "Our world class business, accounting and computer science departments have partnered to create an interdisciplinary major to prepare people for these revolutionary changes. In this light, we consider it appropriate that we implement digital currency as a method of payment across all our institutions in all cities and countries of our operations."
The new Master's program will be offered both online and on-campus to students worldwide starting in Spring 2014. The language of instruction will be English. Additionally, UNic will make the first class in the degree pathway,Introduction to Digital Currency, available for free as an open enrollment, MOOC-like course to anyone interested in learning more about the fundamental principles of digital currency.
"While digital currency is a relatively new concept, currency is one of the oldest human inventions," said Dr. Andreas Polemitis, Senior Vice Rector at the University of Nicosia. "What we aim to explore in this program is the likely development pathway of digital currency and give our students insights that they can bring to bear in their professional careers."
Additionally, UNic is proposing to the Cyprus Government and the relevant stakeholders the initiation of a comprehensive framework for developing Cyprus into a hub for Bitcoin trading, processing and banking.
Bitcoin Payments:Bitcoin will be accepted throughout the whole University of Nicosia system, including affiliated institutions such as:
• St. George's University of London/UNic Medical School, a partnership between St. George's University of London and UNic
• Globaltraining, a professional training division with campuses in Cyprus, Greece and Romania
• Erasmus and Global Semesters exchange and study abroad programs
• UNic Online Degree Divisions, offering online programs to students worldwide.
To learn more about the UNic digital currency initiatives, to request more information about enrollment in the MSc. Program or to register for future announcements please visit:www.unic.ac.cy/digitalcurrency.
About the University of NicosiaThe University of Nicosia is the largest private university in Cyprus and one of the largest accredited English language universities in the Euro-Mediterranean region. It offers more than 60 degree programs from the bachelor's to doctoral levels, and is a particular leader in the fields of accounting, business, computer science, law, architecture, engineering, psychology, medicine and international relations. For more than 20 years, the University has published its own academic journal, the Cyprus Review, which is the only English language international academic journal in Cyprus.
Currently more than 8,500 students from all over the world attend a program at theUniversity of Nicosiaor affiliated institutions (such asSt. George's University of London/UNic Medical School, a partnership between St. George's University of London and UNic;Intercollege, vocational colleges in Nicosia, Limassol and Larnaca;Globaltraining, professional training division with campuses in Cyprus, Greece and Romania;ErasmusandGlobal Semestersexchange and study abroad programs; andUNic Online, offering online programs to students worldwide).
The language of instruction for most University of Nicosia programs is English. To learn more about the University, please visit:www.unic.ac.cy. |
1,385,047,560 | 2013-11-21 15:26:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [505]} | {"Bitcoin": [24]} | Alix Provides Update on Bitcoins | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/alix-provides-bitcoins-152600667.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | VANCOUVER, BRITICH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Nov. 21, 2013) -Alix Resources Corp. ("Alix" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:AIX)(FRANKFURT:37N) (ARXRF-US CLEARING SYMBOL)announces that, with regards to the proposed launch of a bitcoin exchange (see PR dated November 14, 2013), the company will not be proceeding with the implementation of a bitcoin exchange at this time, instead the company will conduct additional due diligence on the bitcoin sector prior to making a decision as to whether to implement a Bitcoin exchange. The Company will provide an update to its shareholders when the due diligence process is complete.
The Company further announces that it intends to continue its proposed bitcoin service payment plan with its mining service providers, whereby such service providers will accept payment in bitcoin for their services. Since the Company's initial announcement, the Company has received favorable responses from other entities in the junior public mining exploration industry, and anticipates that it may enter further bitcoin service payment plans with others. The Company will provide further updates as they arise.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
Michael England, President
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. |
1,385,047,560 | 2013-11-21 15:26:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [505]} | {"Bitcoin": [24]} | Alix Provides Update on Bitcoins | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alix-provides-bitcoins-152600667.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | VANCOUVER, BRITICH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Nov. 21, 2013) -Alix Resources Corp. ("Alix" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:AIX)(FRANKFURT:37N) (ARXRF-US CLEARING SYMBOL)announces that, with regards to the proposed launch of a bitcoin exchange (see PR dated November 14, 2013), the company will not be proceeding with the implementation of a bitcoin exchange at this time, instead the company will conduct additional due diligence on the bitcoin sector prior to making a decision as to whether to implement a Bitcoin exchange. The Company will provide an update to its shareholders when the due diligence process is complete.
The Company further announces that it intends to continue its proposed bitcoin service payment plan with its mining service providers, whereby such service providers will accept payment in bitcoin for their services. Since the Company's initial announcement, the Company has received favorable responses from other entities in the junior public mining exploration industry, and anticipates that it may enter further bitcoin service payment plans with others. The Company will provide further updates as they arise.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
Michael England, President
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. |
1,385,048,348 | 2013-11-21 15:39:08+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [504]} | {"Bitcoin": [24]} | Alix Provides Update on Bitcoins | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/alix-provides-bitcoins-153908721.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | VANCOUVER, BRITICH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Nov 21, 2013) -Alix Resources Corp. ("Alix" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:AIX)(FRANKFURT:37N) (ARXRF-US CLEARING SYMBOL)announces that, with regards to the proposed launch of a bitcoin exchange (see PR dated November 14, 2013), the company will not be proceeding with the implementation of a bitcoin exchange at this time, instead the company will conduct additional due diligence on the bitcoin sector prior to making a decision as to whether to implement a Bitcoin exchange. The Company will provide an update to its shareholders when the due diligence process is complete.
The Company further announces that it intends to continue its proposed bitcoin service payment plan with its mining service providers, whereby such service providers will accept payment in bitcoin for their services. Since the Company's initial announcement, the Company has received favorable responses from other entities in the junior public mining exploration industry, and anticipates that it may enter further bitcoin service payment plans with others. The Company will provide further updates as they arise.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
Michael England, President
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. |
1,385,048,348 | 2013-11-21 15:39:08+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [504]} | {"Bitcoin": [24]} | Alix Provides Update on Bitcoins | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alix-provides-bitcoins-153908721.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | VANCOUVER, BRITICH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Nov 21, 2013) -Alix Resources Corp. ("Alix" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:AIX)(FRANKFURT:37N) (ARXRF-US CLEARING SYMBOL)announces that, with regards to the proposed launch of a bitcoin exchange (see PR dated November 14, 2013), the company will not be proceeding with the implementation of a bitcoin exchange at this time, instead the company will conduct additional due diligence on the bitcoin sector prior to making a decision as to whether to implement a Bitcoin exchange. The Company will provide an update to its shareholders when the due diligence process is complete.
The Company further announces that it intends to continue its proposed bitcoin service payment plan with its mining service providers, whereby such service providers will accept payment in bitcoin for their services. Since the Company's initial announcement, the Company has received favorable responses from other entities in the junior public mining exploration industry, and anticipates that it may enter further bitcoin service payment plans with others. The Company will provide further updates as they arise.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
Michael England, President
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. |
1,385,054,874 | 2013-11-21 17:27:54+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [532, 1897]} | {} | FEC: Donors can't use bitcoins for contributions | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/fec-donors-cant-bitcoins-contributions-162916315.html | Associated Press | https://apnews.com/ | WASHINGTON (AP) -- Political organizations can't accept contributions in the form of bitcoins, at least for now, The Federal Election Commission said Thursday. The commission passed on a request by the Conservative Action Fund, a political action committee, to use the digital currency. That group had asked the FEC recently whether it could accept bitcoins, how it could spend them and how donors must report those contributions. It was not immediately clear whether the same ruling would apply to individual political candidates. Bitcoin is a cybercurrency that is relatively anonymous and is created and exchanged independently of any government or bank. Some retailers accept it, and the currency can be converted into cash after being deposited into virtual wallets. But the FEC isn't yet sold on allowing bitcoins to funnel into the bank accounts of political campaigns and outside groups supporting them, and commissioners deadlocked 3-3 along party lines Thursday. FEC chairwoman Ellen Weintraub acknowledged that she had never heard of bitcoins until she saw the Conservative Action Fund's request. Weintraub, a Democrat, raised the prospect of anonymous or foreign bitcoin donations — both prohibited under federal law — flowing into campaigns and outside groups. But she suggested the FEC would revisit bitcoins at a later date. Some commissioners who supported bitcoin donations said current regulations already allow for bitcoin transactions. Republican Commissioner Lee Goodman, who was recently confirmed by the Senate, voted in favor of the fund's request. Fund lawyers had asked the FEC as early as this summer about the use of bitcoin in a changing campaign finance system. "Notwithstanding the worth of an individual bitcoin, their general popularity is soaring," they said in a letter, noting the Libertarian Party and other state-level candidates already accept the currency. Bitcoins have gained increased attention by the U.S. government, particularly how they can be used alongside of more traditional currency. At a hearing this week before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, federal officials told lawmakers that bitcoin and other companies should receive greater scrutiny from financial regulators and other authorities. Story continues This is not the FEC's first time debating how modern technology can square with the country's decades-old campaign finance laws. Last summer, for instance, the commission approved the use of political contributions via cell phone text messages. ___ Follow Jack Gillum on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jackgillum |
1,385,056,920 | 2013-11-21 18:02:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1360, 1423, 2154, 2451, 2697, 2936, 3061, 3168, 3480, 3692, 4344, 4456, 4777, 4978, 5629, 6139, 6504, 6777, 7640, 7764, 7958, 8005]} | {"Bitcoin": [0]} | Bitcoin Is the Segway of Currency | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-segway-currency-180200628.html | The Atlantic | http://www.theatlantic.com/ | We were promised jetpacks. We got Segways instead.
Well,wedidn't get Segways. Nobody did. At least nobody other than mall cops, tour groups, and techies. Okay,andironic polo players. But in any case, it's fair to say that Segway hasn't exactly been "to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy," like its founder Dean Kamensaid it would. It hasn't even been to the moped what the moped was to the horse and buggy. Or what the bicycle was. It's just been a (sometimes morbid) punchline. And one that's almost too impossible to believe. Did you know that Kamen thought he'd need anaround-the-clock factorychurning out 10,000 Segways a week to meet initial demand? It's true. It's also true that he only needed to make 10 a week to do so.
This wasn't just self-delusion. It was mass delusion. Back in 2001, Steve Jobs thought Segway could be as big as personal computers. The venture capitalist behind Amazon thought it could be bigger than the internet.The entire internet. The only reasonable explanation for all this hype was that neither of them had actually seen someone ride a Segway. Because, as Y Combinator'sPaul Grahamputs it, you can't ride a Segway without looking like a "smug dork." And people generally try to avoid looking like that. They won't use something so inherently ridiculous, no matter how technically impressive it might be.
Like Bitcoin.
Now, for those of you who aren't techno-libertarians, Bitcoin is supposed to be a virtual currency you can use to buy things online. Except it's not really a currency, and you can't really buy that much with it. It's more like adotcom stock—circa 1999. See, in just the last month, one bitcoin has gone from closing at a then-record $192 to reaching $788 on Monday. It then opened at $502 on Tuesday, before briefly rocketing up to$900, and ultimately falling to $646. Just your average 80 percent price swing. That's totally normal for currencies ... if you multiply their biggest swings by 80.
You can kind of see these absurdprice movesin the chart below. But only kind of, because the vertical up-and-downs have come so fast that they've blurred into each other. It's almost as if Bitcoin doesn't have a single price at any one time, but rather a range of possible prices that depend on the observer. (Note: the red dots show each day's closing price, and the black lines show each day's high and low).
We can see this a little better if we zoom in on just the last two months. Bitcoin prices were pretty flat from the end of September through early October, but then (relatively at least) doubled slowly. Then they doubled quickly. And then even quicker—before falling fast. Not exactly a stable store of value.
So why has Bitcoin gone parabolic? And what does this have to do with Segway? Well, the short answer is we don't know why the virtual currency has exploded. Part of it might bedemand from China(which you can see in this realtime chart ofwho's buying Bitcoins). Part of it might be the reduced supply after the FBI shut down and seized the drug website Silk Road'ssubstantial Bitcoin holdings. And part of it might be pure mania. But all of these are just another way of saying that Bitcoin's design makes it prone to these boom-bust cycles.
Segway certainly knows something about design problems. Though in its case, its product worked fine, if zipping around on a glorified scooter was your kind of thing. The problem was you couldn't use the product without looking insufferably pretentious. Bitcoin, though, has deeper problems. Its product doesn't work, and its early adopters are still incredibly self-satisfied—because it's making them rich. But the product really doesn't work.
See, the idea behind Bitcoin is to create a decentralized currency that central banks can't inflate and governments can't tax. Basically, digital gold. And like actual gold, the only way to get new bitcoins is to "mine" for them. That involves running a computationally-taxing program on your computer that mostly generates gibberish, but maybe, just maybe, some bitcoins too. The key, though, is that mining for more of the virtual currency doesn't create more of it.That's because there's a predetermined number of bitcoins. Specifically, there are around 12 million today, and there will be21 million in 2040—and no more after that. Of course, this limited supply means Bitcoin should tend to increase in value against the dollar. But only tend to. See, its deflationary bias means Bitcoin prices will go upand downquite violently. Think about it this way. The supply of bitcoins can't increase much to meet increased demand, so increased demand will make prices soar. And soaring prices will make early adopters try to cash out their winnings—which will send prices crashing back down.
In other words, Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme libertarians use to make money off each other—because gold wasn't enough of one for them.
But techies say so what. That this misses the point. That what's revolutionary about Bitcoin isn't that it's a currency with no state-backing. What's revolutionary is that it's apayments systemwithno third-party, like a credit card company, standing in between buyers and sellers. See, any time you buy something, it's a minor leap of faith. You choose to believe that the seller will deliver as promised—and if they don't, you want your money back. That's where financial intermediaries like credit card companies and Paypal come in. They make sure buyers and sellers are both trustworthy, and handle any disputes.
Now, it's nice to be able to get your money back if things go wrong, but that's not free. The middlemen take their cut. Bitcoin, though, has no middlemen. It's just a decentralized peer-to-peer system. So you can't get your bitcoins back if things go wrong, but there won't be any transaction fees. The question is whether non-enthusiasts will think this trade-off is worth it.
Actually, the question is whether anyone will actually use bitcoins to buy things at all. It's not clear why they would when its value can go from $500 to $900 in a matter of hours. Nor when so many people treat it as an inflation hedge. They think of Bitcoin more as an investment than as money. Indeed,researchersfrom the University of California-San Diego and George Mason University found that 64 percent of all bitcoins are being hoarded in accounts that have never been spent. And of the bitcoins that are being spent, a full 60 percent are on the gambling site Satoshi Dice.
Therearecompanies trying to expand Bitcoin beyond its core constituencies of libertarians, gamblers, and people buying drugs. The startupBitpay, for one, lets merchants immediately convert any bitcoin payments into dollars. The idea is it can charge lower fees without making companies take on the risk that Bitcoin's value falls. It's a clever idea that should make merchants more willing to accept bitcoins ... but won't make people more willing to use them. The people who have bitcoins still have no reason to spend them, and the people who don't still have no reason to get them. They don't want a currency whose value you can't predict from one hour to the next. They don't want to buy things anonymously. And they don't want transactions to be irreversible (and certainly wouldn't want that if theygot hacked).
Every big idea starts out sounding crazy. But not every crazy-sounding idea ends up being big. History is littered with Segways. But for all its majestic dweebiness, at least the Segway was kind of useful. You really could zoom across sidewalks without anything resembling effort. I don't know why you'd want to, but you could. But what can you do with Bitcoin? Well, it's good for realandfake gambling. Since it doesn't have any actual fundamentals, it can be worth anything: Bitcoin 36,000 and 36 are about equally plausible. That's good for making money at the expense of people who get in the game later, but little else.
So the biggest difference between Segway and Bitcoin might be that even mall cops won't use Bitcoin.
More From The Atlantic
• Are You A Workaholic? Blame Your Parents
• You Can't Fix Income Inequality Without Fixing Unemployment
• Are Democrats Really Better at Running the Economy Than Republicans? |
1,385,056,920 | 2013-11-21 18:02:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1360, 1423, 2154, 2451, 2697, 2936, 3061, 3168, 3480, 3692, 4344, 4456, 4777, 4978, 5629, 6139, 6504, 6777, 7640, 7764, 7958, 8005]} | {"Bitcoin": [0]} | Bitcoin Is the Segway of Currency | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-segway-currency-180200628.html | The Atlantic | http://www.theatlantic.com/ | We were promised jetpacks. We got Segways instead.
Well,wedidn't get Segways. Nobody did. At least nobody other than mall cops, tour groups, and techies. Okay,andironic polo players. But in any case, it's fair to say that Segway hasn't exactly been "to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy," like its founder Dean Kamensaid it would. It hasn't even been to the moped what the moped was to the horse and buggy. Or what the bicycle was. It's just been a (sometimes morbid) punchline. And one that's almost too impossible to believe. Did you know that Kamen thought he'd need anaround-the-clock factorychurning out 10,000 Segways a week to meet initial demand? It's true. It's also true that he only needed to make 10 a week to do so.
This wasn't just self-delusion. It was mass delusion. Back in 2001, Steve Jobs thought Segway could be as big as personal computers. The venture capitalist behind Amazon thought it could be bigger than the internet.The entire internet. The only reasonable explanation for all this hype was that neither of them had actually seen someone ride a Segway. Because, as Y Combinator'sPaul Grahamputs it, you can't ride a Segway without looking like a "smug dork." And people generally try to avoid looking like that. They won't use something so inherently ridiculous, no matter how technically impressive it might be.
Like Bitcoin.
Now, for those of you who aren't techno-libertarians, Bitcoin is supposed to be a virtual currency you can use to buy things online. Except it's not really a currency, and you can't really buy that much with it. It's more like adotcom stock—circa 1999. See, in just the last month, one bitcoin has gone from closing at a then-record $192 to reaching $788 on Monday. It then opened at $502 on Tuesday, before briefly rocketing up to$900, and ultimately falling to $646. Just your average 80 percent price swing. That's totally normal for currencies ... if you multiply their biggest swings by 80.
You can kind of see these absurdprice movesin the chart below. But only kind of, because the vertical up-and-downs have come so fast that they've blurred into each other. It's almost as if Bitcoin doesn't have a single price at any one time, but rather a range of possible prices that depend on the observer. (Note: the red dots show each day's closing price, and the black lines show each day's high and low).
We can see this a little better if we zoom in on just the last two months. Bitcoin prices were pretty flat from the end of September through early October, but then (relatively at least) doubled slowly. Then they doubled quickly. And then even quicker—before falling fast. Not exactly a stable store of value.
So why has Bitcoin gone parabolic? And what does this have to do with Segway? Well, the short answer is we don't know why the virtual currency has exploded. Part of it might bedemand from China(which you can see in this realtime chart ofwho's buying Bitcoins). Part of it might be the reduced supply after the FBI shut down and seized the drug website Silk Road'ssubstantial Bitcoin holdings. And part of it might be pure mania. But all of these are just another way of saying that Bitcoin's design makes it prone to these boom-bust cycles.
Segway certainly knows something about design problems. Though in its case, its product worked fine, if zipping around on a glorified scooter was your kind of thing. The problem was you couldn't use the product without looking insufferably pretentious. Bitcoin, though, has deeper problems. Its product doesn't work, and its early adopters are still incredibly self-satisfied—because it's making them rich. But the product really doesn't work.
See, the idea behind Bitcoin is to create a decentralized currency that central banks can't inflate and governments can't tax. Basically, digital gold. And like actual gold, the only way to get new bitcoins is to "mine" for them. That involves running a computationally-taxing program on your computer that mostly generates gibberish, but maybe, just maybe, some bitcoins too. The key, though, is that mining for more of the virtual currency doesn't create more of it.That's because there's a predetermined number of bitcoins. Specifically, there are around 12 million today, and there will be21 million in 2040—and no more after that. Of course, this limited supply means Bitcoin should tend to increase in value against the dollar. But only tend to. See, its deflationary bias means Bitcoin prices will go upand downquite violently. Think about it this way. The supply of bitcoins can't increase much to meet increased demand, so increased demand will make prices soar. And soaring prices will make early adopters try to cash out their winnings—which will send prices crashing back down.
In other words, Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme libertarians use to make money off each other—because gold wasn't enough of one for them.
But techies say so what. That this misses the point. That what's revolutionary about Bitcoin isn't that it's a currency with no state-backing. What's revolutionary is that it's apayments systemwithno third-party, like a credit card company, standing in between buyers and sellers. See, any time you buy something, it's a minor leap of faith. You choose to believe that the seller will deliver as promised—and if they don't, you want your money back. That's where financial intermediaries like credit card companies and Paypal come in. They make sure buyers and sellers are both trustworthy, and handle any disputes.
Now, it's nice to be able to get your money back if things go wrong, but that's not free. The middlemen take their cut. Bitcoin, though, has no middlemen. It's just a decentralized peer-to-peer system. So you can't get your bitcoins back if things go wrong, but there won't be any transaction fees. The question is whether non-enthusiasts will think this trade-off is worth it.
Actually, the question is whether anyone will actually use bitcoins to buy things at all. It's not clear why they would when its value can go from $500 to $900 in a matter of hours. Nor when so many people treat it as an inflation hedge. They think of Bitcoin more as an investment than as money. Indeed,researchersfrom the University of California-San Diego and George Mason University found that 64 percent of all bitcoins are being hoarded in accounts that have never been spent. And of the bitcoins that are being spent, a full 60 percent are on the gambling site Satoshi Dice.
Therearecompanies trying to expand Bitcoin beyond its core constituencies of libertarians, gamblers, and people buying drugs. The startupBitpay, for one, lets merchants immediately convert any bitcoin payments into dollars. The idea is it can charge lower fees without making companies take on the risk that Bitcoin's value falls. It's a clever idea that should make merchants more willing to accept bitcoins ... but won't make people more willing to use them. The people who have bitcoins still have no reason to spend them, and the people who don't still have no reason to get them. They don't want a currency whose value you can't predict from one hour to the next. They don't want to buy things anonymously. And they don't want transactions to be irreversible (and certainly wouldn't want that if theygot hacked).
Every big idea starts out sounding crazy. But not every crazy-sounding idea ends up being big. History is littered with Segways. But for all its majestic dweebiness, at least the Segway was kind of useful. You really could zoom across sidewalks without anything resembling effort. I don't know why you'd want to, but you could. But what can you do with Bitcoin? Well, it's good for realandfake gambling. Since it doesn't have any actual fundamentals, it can be worth anything: Bitcoin 36,000 and 36 are about equally plausible. That's good for making money at the expense of people who get in the game later, but little else.
So the biggest difference between Segway and Bitcoin might be that even mall cops won't use Bitcoin.
More From The Atlantic
• Are You A Workaholic? Blame Your Parents
• You Can't Fix Income Inequality Without Fixing Unemployment
• Are Democrats Really Better at Running the Economy Than Republicans? |
1,385,068,260 | 2013-11-21 21:11:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [2956]} | {"Bitcoin": [74]} | There's An Electronic Currency That Could Save The Economy — And It's Not Bitcoin | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/theres-electronic-currency-could-save-211122961.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Mike Nudelman, Business Insider
The United States has been marred in slow economic growth and a weak recovery for years now. Unemployment remains high. This is despite extraordinary efforts by the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy. This drawn out period of low inflation and high unemployment has gotten more and more people talking about a "new normal" of mediocre growth.
Economists have been looking for ways to give central banks more power to combat recessions and prevent these long, drawn out recoveries. Larry Summers laid out thismajor impending economic challengein his recent speech at the IMF. Normally, when a recession hits, central banks cut interest rates to incentivize firms to invest and to spur economic growth. But when interest rates hit zero, those banks lose one of their most important tools to combat recessions. This is called the zero lower bound.
Hitting the zero-lower bound means that interest rates cannot reach their natural equilibrium where desired investment equals desired savings. Instead, even at zero, interest rates are too high, leading to too much saving and a lack of demand. Thus we get the slow recovery.
Until recently, we hadn't hit that bound. But since the Great Recession, we've been stuck up against it and the Fed has been forced to use unconventional policy tools instead. What Summers warned of is that this may become the new normal. When the next recession hits, interest rates are likely to be barely above zero. The Fed will cut them and we'll find ourselves up against the zero lower bound yet again and face yet another slow recovery.
So what's the answer?
University of Michigan economist Miles Kimball hasdeveloped a theoretical solutionto this problem in the form of a n electronic currency that would allow the Fedto bring nominal rates below zero to combat recessions. He's been presenting his plan to different economists and central bankers around the world. Kimball has alsowrittenrepeatedlyabout it andwas recently interviewed by Wonkblog's Dylan Matthews.
"If you have a bad recession, then firms are afraid to invest," he told Business Insider. "You have to give people a pretty good deal to make them willing to invest and that good deal means that the borrowers actually have to be paid to tend the money for the savers."
But paper currency makes this impossible.
"You have this tradition that as it is now is enshrined in law in various ways that the government is going to guarantee to all savers that they will get [at least] a zero interest," Kimball said.
If the Fed lowered rates below zero in our current financial system, savers would simply withdraw their money from the bank and sit on it instead of letting it incur negative returns. The paper currency itself — because it's something that can be physically withdrawn from the financial system — prevents rates from going negative.
This is where Kimball's idea for an electronic currency comes in. However, unlike Bitcoin, which prides itself on its decentralization and anonymity, Kimball's digital currency would be centralized and widely used. He would effectively set up two different types of currencies: dollars and e-dollars. Right now, your $100 bill is equal to the $100 in the bank. If you're bank account has a 5% interest rate, you earn $5 of interest in a year and that $100 bill is still worth $100. But what would happen if that interest were -5%? Then you would lose $5 over the course of the year. Knowing this, you would rationally withdraw the $100 ahead of time and keep it out of the bank. This is where the separate currencies come in.
"You have to do something a little bit more to get the negative rate on the paper currency," Kimball said. "You have to have the $100 bill be worth $95 a year later in order to have a -5% interest rate. The idea is to arrange things so let’s say $100 in the bank equals $100 in paper currency now, but in a year, $95 in the bank is equal to $100 in paper currency. You have an exchange rate between them."
"After a year, I could take $95 out of the bank and get a $100 bill or if I wanted to put a $100 bill into the bank, they would credit my account with $95."
Got that? After a year of a -5% interest rate, $100 dollars are equal to $95 e-dollars. This ensures that paper currency also faces a negative interest rate as well and eliminates the incentive for savers to hoard dollar bills if the Fed implements a negative rate. Presto! The zero lower bound is solved.
The benefits of this policy go even further though: We can say goodbye to inflation as well.
"Once you take away the zero lower bound, there isn't a really strong reason to have 2% inflation at this point," Kimball said. "The major central banks around the world have 2% inflation and Ben Bernanke explained very clearly why that is. It's to steer away from the zero lower bound."
He's right. Back in March, Ryan Avent asked Bernanke why not have a zero percent inflation target.Bernanke answered, "[I] f you have zero inflation, you’re very close to the deflation zone and nominal interest rates will be so low that it would be very difficult to respond fully to recessions."
But if nominal interest rates are allowed to go below zero, then the Fed has ample room to respond to recessions even if rates start out low. This is another major benefit from eliminating the zero lower bound.
What Kimball, whose blog is titledConfessions of a Supply Side Liberal, is most excited about is moving beyond the demand shortfall the economy currently faces to the supply side issues that hold back long-term growth.
"If you care at all about the future of this country, one of the things you need to realize is we need to solve the demand side so we can get back to the supply side issues that are really the tricky thing for the long run," he said. "The way to solve the demand side issues that is the most consistent with not messing up our supply side is monetary policy and making it so we can have negative interest rates."
At the moment, e-dollars are still only a theoretical concept, but Kimball is hopeful that they could be put into action in the near future. He believes that if a government bought in, it could be using an electronic currency in three years and reap the benefits of it soon after.
"This is going to happen some day," he concluded. "Let me tell you why. There are a lot of countries in the world and some country is going to do this and it's going to be a whole lot easier for other countries to do it once some country has stepped out."
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1,416,492,000 | 2014-11-20 14:00:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [46, 80, 861, 1026, 1068, 1173, 1371, 2047, 2161, 2180]} | {"Bitcoin": [0]} | Bitcoin Shop to Donate a Portion of Its Ecommerce Gross Profits to Help Africare Fight Ebola | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-shop-donate-portion-ecommerce-140000107.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | ARLINGTON, VA--(Marketwired - Nov 20, 2014) - Bitcoin Shop, Inc. (OTCQB:BTCS) ("Bitcoin Shop" or the "Company"), operator of the digital currency ecommerce marketplacewww.btcs.com,which is undertaking the build-out of a universal digital currency ecosystem, today announced its plans to donate fifty percent (50%) of its ecommerce gross profits toAfricare, a Washington, DC based non-profit organization, starting November 28, 2014 through December 31, 2014. Africare is currently fighting the spread of Ebola through various initiatives in West African communities, including strengthening local health care systems, supplying personal protective equipment and administering behavior change education to try to prevent the disease from spreading.
Africare has raised over $50,000 to date towards their goal of $100,000 to help stop the current Ebola outbreak. Bitcoin Shop encourages customers to do their holiday shopping on its new 2.0 beta ecommerce platform or its legacy platform to help support the Company's donation. Bitcoin Shop will also be participating inBitcoin Black Fridayon November 28, 2014 and will have special deals on specific products for customers. Bitcoin Shop's beta site offers over 2 million products and utilizes its "Intelligent Shopping Engine" to find consumers competitive prices on products from over 85 retailers.
Charles Allen, CEO of Bitcoin Shop, commented, "As part of the digital currency ecosystem we are happy to help support Africare and its efforts on the ground, working with communities affected by the disease in its fight against the spread of Ebola."
Donors have helped Africare deliver $1.4 million in necessary medical supplies and reach more than 100,000 West Africans with Ebola behavior change messages. "Africare has empowered African communities to overcome disease time and again -- polio, river blindness, malaria and more," affirmed Africare President Darius Mans. "We know that with the right support, West Africans can contain Ebola and prevent future outbreaks, and we are grateful to Bitcoin Shop and its users for their commitment to Africare and the communities we partner with every day."
About Bitcoin Shop, Inc.:Bitcoin Shop, Inc. plans to build a universal digital currency platform with the goal of enabling users to engage in the digital currency ecosystem through one point of access. We currently operate our legacy ecommerce website (www.bitcoinshop.us) and are operating our public beta site (www.btcs.com) where consumers can purchase products using digital currency such as bitcoin, litecoin and dogecoin, by searching through a selection of over 2 million items. We provide our customers competitive pricing options from over 85 retailers through our "Intelligent Shopping Engine". All ecommerce customer orders are fulfilled by third party vendors. We plan to use our ecommerce platform as a customer on-ramp for a broader digital currency platform. We have been actively partnering with strategic digital currency companies who have technologies, services or products that are complementary to our business strategy by making investments in them and integrating with them.
Digital currencies use peer-to-peer networks to facilitate instant payments. They are categorized as cryptocurrencies, as they use cryptography as a security measure. Digital currency issuances and transactions are carried out collectively by the network, with no central authority, and allow users to make verified transfers.
About Africare:Africare is a leading non-governmental organization (NGO) committed to addressing African development and policy issues by working in partnership with African people to build sustainable, healthy and productive communities. Since 1970, Africare has benefited tens of millions of men, women and children through thousands of projects across 36 countries in Africa by integrating our community-based core expertise with our technical specialties of Agriculture and Health, always prioritizing the cross-cutting themes of Economic Development; Nutrition; Water, Sanitation & Hygiene; Women's Empowerment; and Youth Engagement. Visithttp://www.africare.orgfor more information.
Forward Looking Statements:Certain statements in this press release constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Words such as "may," "might," "will," "should," "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "continue," "predict," "forecast," "project," "plan," "intend" or similar expressions, or statements regarding intent, belief, or current expectations, are forward-looking statements. While the Company believes these forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on any such forward-looking statements, which are based on information available to us on the date of this release. These forward looking statements are based upon current estimates and assumptions and are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including without limitation those set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, not limited to Risk Factors relating to its digital currency business contained therein. Thus, actual results could be materially different. The Company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. |
1,385,120,004 | 2013-11-22 11:33:24+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [65, 158, 212, 312, 439, 543, 624, 694, 862, 1003, 1361, 1422, 1462, 1640, 1698, 1764, 1825, 1930, 2168, 2215, 2244, 2345, 2425, 2673, 2961, 3115, 3155, 3644, 3652, 3796, 3984, 4091]} | {"Bitcoin": [42]} | "In Cryptography We Trust"-Canada's First Bitcoin Expo Coming in 2014 | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cryptography-trust-canadas-first-bitcoin-113324847.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Nov 22, 2013) -On behalf of the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada, I wish to invite you to one of the largest planned international Bitcoin events to date. Join us on April 11th-13th at Bitcoin Expo 2014 in Toronto.The prevailing theme will revolve around the growth and development of Bitcoin communities worldwide with a focus on collaborative and decentralized models. The Expo will be a showcase of prominent Bitcoin leaders, speakers, and businesses, and will be a stage where Canada can display its world class Bitcoin communities and business startups.
Canada is fast becoming known for its Bitcoin innovation and leadership charge. Recently, the world's first Bitcoin ATM went live within our borders. This was made possible by the legal and regulatory environment we're currently enjoying in Canada which is proving to be more Bitcoin friendly than many other nations around the world. We're excited to show you firsthand the enthusiasm and dedication of the Canadian Bitcoin community.
The Expo will be held at Metro Toronto Convention Center, Canada's largest conference and meeting facility, located next to Toronto's renowned financial district. Toronto is within a five-hour drive of some of the most populated cities in Canada, and is an hour drive from Niagara Falls and the border to the United States.
In addition to Bitcoin community building, other themes will revolve around Bitcoin and charitable giving, benefits Bitcoin can offer to developing nations, and policy and regulatory environments that we see being constructed around the world in response to this disruptive new innovation.
The Bitcoin Expo 2014 will be an event hosted by the Canadian Bitcoin community. However, we want to make this an international Bitcoin event, done in a collaborative way that will benefit Bitcoin communities not just in Canada but also specifically in under-developed areas and in areas where Bitcoin is still in its infancy. We will be offering scholarships that will allow potential speakers who might otherwise be limited by financial or political constraints the opportunity to visit Toronto and share valuable perspectives on Bitcoin. Again, this is an event put on by the Bitcoin community... for the Bitcoin community. It will be organized 100% by volunteers, and all proceeds will be returned to the Bitcoin community in a crowdsourced way that's decided by the membership of the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada. This is a non-profit event dedicated to assisting speakers, leaders, and business owners get their messages across. We would like everybody to participate, collaborate, and work together to make this the most meaningful Bitcoin event to date.
Registration will begin in early 2014. Should you have any questions, wish to become a speaker, or contribute in any way, please give me a call at +1 416,831,9593, email me atadiiorio@bitcoinalliance.ca, or contact me via Skype; user namea.diiorio.
I'm excited the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada is hosting this event. Please join us. Canada welcomes you!
[{"Anthony Di Iorio": "Executive Director"}, {"Anthony Di Iorio": "Bitcoin Alliance of Canada"}]
About the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada
The BAC is dedicated: to raising awareness of bitcoin among Canadian consumers, merchants, businesses, regulators, and policy makers; to promoting bitcoin adoption in Canada; to further Canadian and international study and research in bitcoin and other virtual currencies; and, to promoting Canadian participation in international partnerships, associations, and other efforts to promote, study, research, and discuss bitcoin and other virtual currencies.
About Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a digital currency and protocol that enables instant peer-to-peer transactions and worldwide payments for almost no processing fees. Bitcoin uses technology to operate with no central authority; managing transactions and bitcoin issuance is carried out collectively by the network. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that cannot be covered by any previous payment systems. The software that the Bitcoin network runs on is a community-driven, free, open-source project released under the MIT license. |
1,416,507,279 | 2014-11-20 18:14:39+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [230, 2063, 2370]} | {} | Realcoin Rebrands as Tether and Enters Private Beta | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/realcoin-rebrands-tether-enters-private-181439863.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | HONG KONG, CHINA--(Marketwired - Nov 20, 2014) - Today Realcoin officially launched in private beta asTether, the new way to move money online. Tether makes it possible for anyone to safely enjoy the speed and cost-savings of the Bitcoin blockchain for P2P transactions, online shopping and bill payment while using familiar currencies. To request an invite to the Tether private beta, visitwww.tether.to
The blockchain is a decentralized public ledger for exchanging value anywhere in the world without the added time and expense of banks or other third party intermediaries. To date, bitcoin and altcoins have been created for making blockchain transactions, but these emerging cryptocurrencies suffer from severe market volatility, rendering them impractical for mainstream daily use.
Tether directly solves this problem by formatting government-issued currencies as standardized digital tokens for making worldwide transactions over the blockchain. The private beta currently supports USTether (US+), EuroTether (EU+), and YenTether (JP+).
"While the blockchain shows great promise to more efficiently connect the world to banking, individuals are very hesitant to use bitcoin until we effectively end the volatility concern," said Reeve Collins, co-founder and CEO of Tether. "This is a critical step for mass adoption of this technology, and Tether is bridging the gap by bringing familiar currencies to the blockchain."
The Tether platform is fully transparent and will be regularly audited. Every Tether+ token is backed 100% by its original currency, and can be redeemed at any time with no exposure to exchange risk. In addition, customers can access a real-time balance sheet of Tether's reserves, offering unprecedented access to the movement of assets and outstanding Tether+ in circulation.
The company's industry-leading launch partners include:
Bitfinex, the world's largest exchange for bitcoins and US dollars.GoCoin, the first international payment platform for bitcoin and other emerging cryptocurrenciesZenBox, the world's largest network of Bitcoin kiosksOmniWallet, a multi-currency bitcoin wallet, powered by MastercoinHolyTransactions, a multi-currency bitcoin walletExpresscoin, the fastest way to buy and sell cryptocurrency in the US
Tether is actively seeking banks, digital currency exchanges, wallet builders, and related companies in the Bitcoin ecosystem to join its global network. For more information or to request an invite to the private beta, please visitwww.tether.to
About TetherFounded in May of 2014, Tether Holdings is a BVI holding company with operations in Hong Kong and the Isle of Man. To learn more, visitwww.tether.to. |
1,385,131,080 | 2013-11-22 14:38:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [31, 283, 599]} | {"Bitcoin": [30]} | Virgin Galactic now accepting Bitcoin for future flights into space | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/2013-11-22-virgin-galactic-bitcoin-space-flight.html | Engadget | https://www.engadget.com/ | As the value and credibility ofBitcoincontinues to skyrocket, Virgin founder Richard Branson now wants to let people use the digital currency to finance a flight into space. Ahead of itsfirst trips next year, Virgin Galactic has already had one "future astronaut" from Hawaii book a Bitcoin-funded ticket and hopes that its affluent clientele will follow suit. An investor himself, Branson has been pushing for governments to regulate the peer-to-peer payment system and believes that today's announcement will give it more credibility. NeitherVirgin Galacticnor Branson has indicated just how many Bitcoins you'll need before you get a return ticket to the heavens, but we suspect this isn't the future that Gene Roddenberry was planning. |
1,385,131,920 | 2013-11-22 14:52:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [348, 1694, 3285]} | {"Bitcoin": [52]} | Silk Road's 'Dread Pirate Roberts' Used $20 Million Bitcoin Fortune To Order 6 Assassinations, According To Feds | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-145202556.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Ross Ulbricht / Facebook
Ross Ulbricht
At a bail hearing in a New York federal court yesterday, federal prosecutors claimed that Ross Ulbricht, the alleged operator of the Silk Road online marketplace for drugs,had ordered six hits on peoplehe believed had cheated him or knew too much, and that he had amassed a personal fortune of $20 million in Bitcoins.
Ina memo to the judge requesting bail for Roberts be denied, prosecutors also claim that Ulbricht — who went by the name "Dread Pirate Roberts" — kept a diary of his finances and assassination orders.
They also filed photographs of multiple driver's licenses that show a photos of Ulbricht but different names on each license.
Ulbricht'smother and supporters say he is innocent:
On Wednesday, supporters also launched a legal defense fundraising campaign, along with a video of testimonials from supporters describing Ulbricht’s character. “Ross is not a criminal mastermind, and Ross is not killer,” says one of Ulbricht’s friends, whose face is not shown in the video.
“I can tell you he’s not a murderer,” Ulbricht’s mother Lyn Ulbricht said ...
The diary begins in 2010, when he first came up with the idea of creating Silk Road using Tor, the anonymous, encrypted version of the internet that makes illicit transactions more secure:
USDOJ
As time went by, Ulbricht allegedly derived the vast majority of his livelihood from running Silk Road. But no one in "real" life knew he was "the Dread Pirate Roberts" — not even his girlfriend. Ulbricht allegedly confessed this fact to an under cover federal agent (UC):
USDOJ
The prosecutors' motion shows Ulbricht believed his net worth was $104 million and he was holding $20 million in Bitcoin:
USDOJ
At the time he was arrested, thefeds found these different drivers' licensesat his rented house in San Francisco:
USDOJ
The feds had Ulbricht under surveillance for months, but in 2013 Ulbricht allegedly started hiring contract killers, the court papers claim:
USDOJ
The number of hits Ulbricht allegedly ordered grew over time, so he added the hits to his Silk Road admin "to-do list," on his computer,the feds' motions says. Here's a sample of the list from March 2013 (emphasis added):
• 04/06/2013made sure backup crons are workinggave angels go ahead to find tony76cleaned up unused libraries on serveradded to forbidden username list to cover Il scam
• 04/08/2013sent payment to angels for hit on tony76 and his 3 associates. . .very high load (300/16), took site offline and refactored main and category pages to be more efficient
The first alleged hit was against a Silk Road employee that Ulbricht allegedly felt lacked "integrity":
USDOJ
The motion says that none of the hits actually led to anyone's death — although Ulbricht allegedly believed they had worked.
The second alleged hit was on someone who tried to blackmail him:
USDOJ
Hits four through six were supposed to be on a group of drug dealers Ulbricht allegedly believed had ripped him off. Feds say he hired a Hell's Angel, "redandwhite," to do the work:
USDOJ
The feds also filed this image, which they claim is the administrator's user interface for Silk Road.
USDOJ
More From Business Insider
• The Man Allegedly Behind The Silk Road Drug Site Is Also Accused Of Plotting Six Murders
• Founder Of New Bitcoin Assassination Market Wants It To Destroy 'All Governments, Everywhere'
• Read All About The Silk Road Drug Marketplace In Its New Newspaper, The 'SR Courier' |
1,385,136,660 | 2013-11-22 16:11:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [545]} | {"Bitcoin": [0]} | Bitcoin's Long-Term Outlook Is Dim | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoins-long-term-outlook-dim-161100485.html | Moody's | https://www.moodys.com/ | The cyber-currency bitcoin shot to market stardom over the past week, rising in value from a low of $359 to just over $900 on Monday, before falling to $502 Tuesday morning and rebounding to $740 in the afternoon on the Japan-based Mt. Gox exchange. Speculators drove the price up and down as the currency drew tentative approval from officials from the U.S. Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Boosters were encouraged to think it could be on the verge of wide acceptance.
Bitcoin's use in digital commerce has grown to an average 54,000 transactions per day in the past two months, up from an average 49,400 over the previous 10, according to blockchain.info, which monitors the currency. Users are attracted to bitcoin's anonymity and online security, features that have also made it attractive to dealers in illicit drugs and malicious software. Yet security has been breached, and the currency's fundamentals could work against its long-term acceptance.
Unlike conventional currencies, bitcoin is not created or backed by any government, but rather created by "miners" performing elaborate computational tasks on line. The number of bitcoins in existence is determined by computer programs that determine the difficulty of mining them. By design, the number of new bitcoins that can be created will decline over time, which means it will experience the equivalent of monetary deflation as demand for the currency grows.
Proponents argue that bitcoins can simply be divided into fractional units for commerce, but a rising currency value also encourages hoarding, by users who see bitcoins as investments or hedges against inflation. Hoarding in turn discourages commercial use. Unless the system changes, bitcoin is likely to end up as the novelty it was before the recent bubble.
Abraham Goldsteinis an Associate Economist at Moody's Analytics.More from Dismal Scientist:
• Economic Indicator Calendar
• This Week's Commentary
• U.S. Business Cycle Tracker |
1,416,522,600 | 2014-11-20 22:30:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [1027, 1173, 1255, 1351, 1543, 3543, 3596, 3931, 4280, 4541, 4794, 4981]} | {"Bitcoin": [4]} | How Bitcoin Could Make Voter Fraud and Stolen Elections Impossible | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-could-voter-fraud-stolen-223000711.html | Entrepreneur | http://www.entrepreneur.com/ | As Americans lined up to vote this month, it was a reminder that voting is a fundamental requirement for a functioning democracy. It enables individuals to express opinions on how they believe their country should be run and who should run it. This process can be an extremely difficult task, especially in larger countries such as India, as collecting votes for millions of people is far from simple. That being said, the voting techniques we use worldwide have barely changed over the last century, and are long overdue for an update. The primary problem with the antiquated methods come down to a single fundamental issue, centralization.
Current voting methods require a large amount of human involvement, from poll workers, to vote counters, to the companies and engineers that design the voting machines. Then you have the oversight groups who employ individuals to oversee the election workers. Current voting methods are inefficient and expensive, susceptible to fraud and manipulation, and need to be vastly improved. Bitcoin technology can provide us with a new and improved voting system built from the ground up, a decentralized and secure alternative.
Related:Bitcoin in 10 Years: 4 Predictions From SecondMarket's Barry Silbert
At its core, Bitcoin is a decentralized and robust ledger secured by computers around the world that run the Bitcoin software. Think of it as a globally transparent accounting book, shared worldwide, that anyone can access and interface with. Through the concepts of game theory and cryptography, the Bitcoin protocol creates afinancial incentiveto secure its network. The way this incentive is structured, it ensures that no single party can manipulate the data that has been written into the ledger. This makes it superior to state sponsored alternatives, especially in countries with a history of corruption, since the ruling government is unable to manipulate any voting data stored on the ledger.
By completely rethinking the voting process, we can solve many of the issues that plague the current system, while adding new and useful benefits. As it stands now, the majority of votes worldwide are pieces of paper. There is no way to audit paper votes without counting them all by hand, and there is no way for an individual voter to be sure their vote was counted. Every task that needs to be handled by a person is an opportunity for a mistake to be made or for fraud to be committed. On top of that, poll workers and vote counters can “stuff the ballot boxes” by adding paper votes themselves, a more common problem in less developed nations, but a concern in all countries. The only way to prevent that type of tampering is heavy oversight, which requires more workers and more cost.
Electronic voting machines aim to reduce some of the inefficiencies and vulnerabilities of paper ballot voting machines, but introduce a whole new set of issues. These machines are made by private corporations and their source code is proprietary. Voters are forced to not only trust that the creators of the machine aren’t malevolent but also that they have created a secure platform, not susceptible to outside tampering. In this respect, the current class of electronic voting machines are actually a step backwards from paper ballots because they are much easier to tamper with and manipulate on a large scale. Since current machines are not inter-operable, with different companies running different software, it becomes a security and compliance quagmire.
Related:Billionaire Entrepreneur Mark Cuban: 'Bitcoin Has No Shot as a Long-Term Digital Currency'
Bitcoin technology offers a fundamentally different approach to vote collection with its decentralized and automated secure protocol. It solves the problems of both paper ballot and electronic voting machines, enabling a cost effective, efficient, open system that is easily audited by both individual voters and the entire community. Bitcoin technology can enable a system where every voter can verify that their vote was counted, see votes for different candidates/issues cast in real time, and be sure that there is no fraud or manipulation by election workers.
Furthermore, the system would ensure that only registered voters are able to vote, without requiring a photo ID. Using Bitcoin technology, every registered voter would have their own key that would enable them to cast their vote, making it impossible for unregistered individuals to vote without one. On top of that, this system would cost magnitudes less than current methods.
A Bitcoin based system can solve most of the issues that currently plague the voting process, without relying on legislation or any additional bureaucracy. Instead of recording votes on paper or in proprietary computer systems, we can record votes on the Bitcoin ledger, the block chain. It is essentially a tech based solution to a human and societal problem. A fair, efficient, and cost-effective voting system is finally possible.
Related:Bitcoin Startups Get Their Own Silicon Valley Accelerator |
1,385,162,113 | 2013-11-22 23:15:13+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [189, 267, 406, 491, 630, 746, 947, 1009, 1063, 1540, 1655]} | {"Bitcoin": [47]} | FinancialContent Expands Editorial Coverage of Bitcoins | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/financialcontent-expands-editorial-coverage-bitcoins-231513745.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | SAN CARLOS, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 22, 2013) - FinancialContent, a leading online provider of business content and stock market data, today announced that it would increase its coverage of Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.
FinancialContent has already made a free Bitcoin to US Dollar currency exchange rate widget for free on its website. This JavaScript widget allows websites to display the price of Bitcoins.
Online publishers are welcome to retrieve code for this widget on a specialBitcoin to US Dollar widgetwebpage.
In addition to creating this new widget, FinancialContent will be increasing its editorial coverage of Bitcoins and other peer-to-peer, decentralized digital currencies through its main editorial channel Market Minute.
Bitcoins were introduced in 2008 and gained media attention in 2012 as Internet-based companies began accepting the virtual currency as payment for online services. Since January 1, 2013, the price of Bitcoins has increased 50-fold. With approximately 12 million Bitcoins in circulation, the recent price of $700 per Bitcoin suggests a market cap of more than $8 billion.
For more information about FinancialContent or to inquire about custom financial data and news widgets, please email us atinfo@financialcontent.com.
Disclaimer: The widgets are provided by FinancialContent for news and informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial or investment advice. The widgets do not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation for an investment in Bitcoins or other virtual or cryptocurrencies. FinancialContent and its products are not affiliated or endorsed by Bitcoin or its underwriters. For a complete overview of FinancialContent's terms and conditions, please visit the webpage athttp://www.financialcontent.com/terms.php
About FinancialContent Services, Inc.FinancialContent Services, Inc. (www.financialcontent.com) is a leading business-to-business provider of stock market data, business news and content syndication services. Backed by Agile Opportunity Fund and Bay Partners, FinancialContent serves over 250 publishers and delivers more than 300 million widgets and web pages a month. |
1,385,208,720 | 2013-11-23 12:12:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [2956, 6629]} | {"Bitcoin": [74]} | There's An Electronic Currency That Could Save The Economy — And It's Not Bitcoin | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/theres-electronic-currency-could-save-121228399.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Mike Nudelman, Business Insider
The United States has been marred in slow economic growth and a weak recovery for years now. Unemployment remains high. This is despite extraordinary efforts by the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy. This drawn out period of low inflation and high unemployment has gotten more and more people talking about a "new normal" of mediocre growth.
Economists have been looking for ways to give central banks more power to combat recessions and prevent these long, drawn out recoveries. Larry Summers laid out thismajor impending economic challengein his recent speech at the IMF. Normally, when a recession hits, central banks cut interest rates to incentivize firms to invest and to spur economic growth. But when interest rates hit zero, those banks lose one of their most important tools to combat recessions. This is called the zero lower bound.
Hitting the zero-lower bound means that interest rates cannot reach their natural equilibrium where desired investment equals desired savings. Instead, even at zero, interest rates are too high, leading to too much saving and a lack of demand. Thus we get the slow recovery.
Until recently, we hadn't hit that bound. But since the Great Recession, we've been stuck up against it and the Fed has been forced to use unconventional policy tools instead. What Summers warned of is that this may become the new normal. When the next recession hits, interest rates are likely to be barely above zero. The Fed will cut them and we'll find ourselves up against the zero lower bound yet again and face yet another slow recovery.
So what's the answer?
University of Michigan economist Miles Kimball hasdeveloped a theoretical solutionto this problem in the form of a n electronic currency that would allow the Fedto bring nominal rates below zero to combat recessions. He's been presenting his plan to different economists and central bankers around the world. Kimball has alsowrittenrepeatedlyabout it andwas recently interviewed by Wonkblog's Dylan Matthews.
"If you have a bad recession, then firms are afraid to invest," he told Business Insider. "You have to give people a pretty good deal to make them willing to invest and that good deal means that the borrowers actually have to be paid to tend the money for the savers."
But paper currency makes this impossible.
"You have this tradition that as it is now is enshrined in law in various ways that the government is going to guarantee to all savers that they will get [at least] a zero interest," Kimball said.
If the Fed lowered rates below zero in our current financial system, savers would simply withdraw their money from the bank and sit on it instead of letting it incur negative returns. The paper currency itself — because it's something that can be physically withdrawn from the financial system — prevents rates from going negative.
This is where Kimball's idea for an electronic currency comes in. However, unlike Bitcoin, which prides itself on its decentralization and anonymity, Kimball's digital currency would be centralized and widely used. He would effectively set up two different types of currencies: dollars and e-dollars. Right now, your $100 bill is equal to the $100 in the bank. If you're bank account has a 5% interest rate, you earn $5 of interest in a year and that $100 bill is still worth $100. But what would happen if that interest were -5%? Then you would lose $5 over the course of the year. Knowing this, you would rationally withdraw the $100 ahead of time and keep it out of the bank. This is where the separate currencies come in.
"You have to do something a little bit more to get the negative rate on the paper currency," Kimball said. "You have to have the $100 bill be worth $95 a year later in order to have a -5% interest rate. The idea is to arrange things so let’s say $100 in the bank equals $100 in paper currency now, but in a year, $95 in the bank is equal to $100 in paper currency. You have an exchange rate between them."
"After a year, I could take $95 out of the bank and get a $100 bill or if I wanted to put a $100 bill into the bank, they would credit my account with $95."
Got that? After a year of a -5% interest rate, $100 dollars are equal to $95 e-dollars. This ensures that paper currency also faces a negative interest rate as well and eliminates the incentive for savers to hoard dollar bills if the Fed implements a negative rate. Presto! The zero lower bound is solved.
The benefits of this policy go even further though: We can say goodbye to inflation as well.
"Once you take away the zero lower bound, there isn't a really strong reason to have 2% inflation at this point," Kimball said. "The major central banks around the world have 2% inflation and Ben Bernanke explained very clearly why that is. It's to steer away from the zero lower bound."
He's right. Back in March, Ryan Avent asked Bernanke why not have a zero percent inflation target.Bernanke answered, "[I] f you have zero inflation, you’re very close to the deflation zone and nominal interest rates will be so low that it would be very difficult to respond fully to recessions."
But if nominal interest rates are allowed to go below zero, then the Fed has ample room to respond to recessions even if rates start out low. This is another major benefit from eliminating the zero lower bound.
What Kimball, whose blog is titledConfessions of a Supply Side Liberal, is most excited about is moving beyond the demand shortfall the economy currently faces to the supply side issues that hold back long-term growth.
"If you care at all about the future of this country, one of the things you need to realize is we need to solve the demand side so we can get back to the supply side issues that are really the tricky thing for the long run," he said. "The way to solve the demand side issues that is the most consistent with not messing up our supply side is monetary policy and making it so we can have negative interest rates."
At the moment, e-dollars are still only a theoretical concept, but Kimball is hopeful that they could be put into action in the near future. He believes that if a government bought in, it could be using an electronic currency in three years and reap the benefits of it soon after.
"This is going to happen some day," he concluded. "Let me tell you why. There are a lot of countries in the world and some country is going to do this and it's going to be a whole lot easier for other countries to do it once some country has stepped out."
More From Business Insider
• There's An Electronic Currency That Could Save The Economy — And It's Not Bitcoin
• Get Ready For A Busy Day Of Fedspeak
• Here's The Scary Possibility That The US Might Need Permanent Bubbles In Order To Grow |
1,416,542,491 | 2014-11-21 04:01:31+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [296, 3362, 3595]} | {} | DEMO Fall 2014 Conference Wraps Day Two of Launching New Startups -- and Crowned DEMO Gods | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/demo-fall-2014-conference-wraps-040131349.html | Marketwired | http://www.marketwired.com/ | SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 20, 2014) -DEMO Fall2014 (www.DEMO.com) today welcomed the launch of another 20 technology products and services focused on solving real-life problems. The conference showcased a hand-selected group of entrepreneurs demonstrating new technologies in the areas of Bitcoin and personal finance, cloud, messaging and the Internet of Things, and setting the pace for future technology. Executives, founders, engineers and investors all gathered at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose to crown the DEMO Gods.
DEMO God Award™ WinnersThe Fall DEMO God Awards are presented to the DEMO Fall companies that exhibitexceptional potentialto thrive in the market while inspiring and stimulating the DEMO audience. Congratulations to the following companies that were honored with Fall DEMO God Awards during DEMO Fall 2014:The Work Cloud:Student Loans(www.goslb.com)Wearables & Hardware:Curb(www.energycurb.com)Mobile:PathSense(www.pathsense.com)Smart Data:Celect(www.celect.net) andGhostery(www.ghostery.com)
Traction Showcase Winner:Templafy(www.templafy.com)
"We traveled the world, meeting with promising startups to look for solutions that harness emerging technology to tackle big problems," said DEMO executive producer Erick Schonfeld. "The core concept of creativity is looking at problems in new ways, and that is what we celebrated onstage at DEMO Fall."
Speaker highlights of day two included key executives as well as "founder judges" who provided critiques and feedback to each demonstrating company:
• Scott Robinson, FinTech Director, Plug and Play
• Rick Yang, Principal, NEA
• Max Gazor, Venture Capital Investor, CRV
• John Lilly, Partner, Greylock Partners
• Angela Yochem, Global CIO, BDP International
• Kobie Fuller, Principal, Accel Partners
• Mara Lewis, Managing Director, Start Co.
• Shanna Tellerman, Partner, Google Ventures
• Jeremy Conrad, Founding Partner, Lemnos Labs
• Stephen Plumlee, Global Chief Operating Officer & EVP, R/GA
• Trae Vasallo, General Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Matt Rogers, Founder and Engineering, Nest Labs
• Keith Rabois, Partner, Khosla Ventures
• Hiten Shah, Co-Founder, KISSMetrics and Crazy Egg
• Deepak Aher, Head of Global Market Enablement, SAP Startup Focus
• Kaustav Mitra, Global VP, SAP Startup Focus
• Bradley Mossman, VP for Convergence CT
• Angela Yochem, Global CIO, BDP International
• Linda Kozlowski, VP, World Wide Operations, Evernote
• Jay Parekh, Director, Business Development, Braintree
• Emma Sinclair, Serial Entrepreneur and CEO, EnterpriseJungle
• Alison Berkley Wagonfeld, Operating Partner, Emergence Capital
• Kathleen Lord, VP, Sales & Customer Success, Relate IQ
• Peter Weed, General Manager, "Fast Growth Tech" Practice, McKinsey and Company
• Danielle Morrill, CEO & Cofounder, Mattermark
• Nir Eyal, Author, "Hooked"; Co-Founder, AdNectar
• Phillip Kahn, CEO, Fullpower
• Lior Ron, CVP, Product Management, Motorola Mobility
• Jeremy Conrad, Founding Partner, Lemnos Labs
• Dave McClure, Founding Partner, 500 Startups
• Tomasz Tunguz, Partner, Redpoint Ventures
• Eric Setton, Co-Founder, Enterprise Jungle
• Tien Tzuo, Founder and CEO, Zuora
• Steve Papa, Founder and Venture Capitalist, Parallel Wireless
• Thomas Debass, Managing Director, U.S. Department of State
DEMO Fall Day Two elite group of demonstrators included:Bitcoin & Personal FinanceAppzen, an ambient solution for T&E expense compliance and audit.Draft, a new online portfolio management company targeting Millennial investors.Hellobit, a money transfer (remittance) solution built on the Bitcoin network.Pavilion.io,a trustless exchange and automated escrow release mechanism for e-commerce sites.SmartContract,contract management that automatically verifies and executes itself, written as code into the blockchain and cryptographically signed.Obsidian,a digital currency trading platform with a US-banking partner.
The Work CloudAccuSuresolves the challenging process of buying business insurance with a service that is free to businesses.Opstarts,an application for business forecasting, projections and scenario planning without spreadsheets.Student Loan Benefitshas invented the 401(k) for student loans. It's a unique benefit that helps growing companies stand out and retain critical talent.Survmetrics Inc,an online survey platform.Venture360,a complete fund management platform to screen, close and track private investments.
MessagingGlanceAt, Inc.,a smart mobile email assistant that uses natural language processing.Kandid,a spontaneous photo-sharing app.Klink,a sales productivity solution that provides real-time customer intelligence.Lifebox,a Web and Android app that uses Q&A to stimulate personal storytelling and connect people in a richer way using digital technologies.MeshMe Inc.,a peer-to-peer mobile messaging and location sharing application.
Internet of ThingsBluVision Inc.,a BluFi Bluetooth-to-WiFi gateway to power Internet of Things connectivity with built-in WiFi bridging iBeacon sensors to the Internet.TheIoteraequipment tracker, the smallest, most efficient tracker designed to run on a new crowd-sourced wireless network.Measurence Inc,a SaaS, cloud-based dashboard that allows retailers A/B to test store window conversions, measure store traffic funnels and analyze retention rates.Seed,technology using Bluetooth Smart, a rapid prototyping kit that allows users to build connected products fast and easily.Yonomi,an app that quietly and automatically coordinates your Internet of Things at home.
DEMO Global Launch Platform - DEMO Global ShowcaseDEMO gives both emerging and established companies from around the world the opportunity to showcase technologies in front of an audience that can expertly evaluate the potential of groundbreaking business plans poised to take enterprise solutions to the next level.DEMO Africa Winners:Chura, Jifunza, Nerve, PaySail Limited and SpacePointe Limited.DEMO Brasil Winners: Atmmos, Beats Brasil, Ez-Parking, Timokids, Lotebox and Softex.
Wearable World PavilionIn partnership with Wearable World, DEMO Fall hosted a special pavilion exclusively to showcase wearable tech. Attendees voted for a "Wearable World Pavilion People's Choice" winner who delivered a 90 second pitch from the DEMO stage. The winner isin Home(www.inhome.me)
DEMO Fall 2014 SponsorsThe DEMO Fall 2014 sponsors included:Platinum Sponsors: Dell, McKinsey & Company, PayPal, Primary Data, SAP, SocialRadius, Sumo Logic, Toyota Financial Services and Zebra Technologies.Traction Showcase Sponsors: AutoBrain; CareLink360; CirrusPath; CloudLogix; Core Mobile, Inc.; CUBE; CultureSphere, Inc.; GreneRobotics; Ice-Breakrr; KoolTechs; Krystallize Technologies; Lineapple; PowWow, Inc.; PracTech; Sanovi; ScriptRock; Socure; SoftPlus (Momenteur); Templafy; VoxyPAD, Inc; and You Are A CEO.GoldSponsors:Innovation Center Denmark, the CUBE at SiliconANGLE and Tivi. For the full list of sponsoring companies, please see theDEMO Sponsorpage.Wearable World Inc. Partners:Ambit Networks, CreoPop, Tappio, Grush, InHome, Interface, Jabil, Jon Lou, Loopd, Playtabase, Secluded.io, Sensilk, Viawear and WIACTS.
About the DEMO ConferencesProduced by IDG, the DEMO conferences in the United States, China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam focus on emerging technologies and new product innovations. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launchpad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Salesforce, WebEx, TiVo, VMware, Fusion-io and thousands of others, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. The DEMO Scholarship Partner Program, subsidized by corporate sponsorships, offers multiple scholarship opportunities to ensure that deserving entrepreneurs have the chance to introduce cutting-edge technological products at DEMO that might have otherwise gone undiscovered. To attend or apply to demo, please go towww.demo.com.
Follow DEMO on Twitter:@demoFollow DEMO on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/DEMOconferenceFollow DEMO Blog:thedemoblog.comFollow IDG Enterprise on Twitter:@IDGEnterprise
About International Data GroupInternational Data Group (IDG) is the world's leading technology media, events, and research company. Founded in 1964 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, IDG products and services reach an audience of more than 280 million technology buyers in 97 countries. IDG Communications' global media brands include ChannelWorld®, CIO®, CITEworld®, CSO®, Computerworld®, DEMO®, GamePro®, InfoWorld®, Macworld®, Network World®, PCWorld® and TechWorld®. IDG's media network features 460 websites, 200 mobile sites and apps and 200 print titles spanning business technology, consumer technology, digital entertainment, and video games worldwide. The IDG TechNetwork represents hundreds of independent websites in an ad network and exchange complementary to IDG's media brands.
A recognized leader in conference and exhibition management, IDG produces more than 700 globally branded technology and entertainment conferences and events in 55 countries. International Data Corporation (IDC), a subsidiary of IDG, has more than 1,000 analysts who provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in more than 110 countries.
Additional information about IDG, a privately held company, is available athttp://www.idg.com. Trademarks and registered trademarks are owned by International Data Group, Inc. All product and company names are trademarks of their respective companies.
All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners. |
1,416,560,160 | 2014-11-21 08:56:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [55, 1677, 1958, 3371]} | {"Bitcoin": [6]} | First Bitcoin Capital Corp. relaunches digital currency exchange CoinQX.com in BETA, open for trading | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-bitcoin-capital-corp-relaunches-085600150.html | ACCESSWIRE | https://www.accesswire.com/ | VANCOUVER, B.C. / ACCESSWIRE / November 21,2014 /First Bitcoin Capital Corp.,(OTCMarkets: BITCF) is pleased to announce that it has relaunched its digital currency exchange, CoinQX.com.
Utilizing sophisticated crypto-currency trading technology, CoinQX.com is live and open for trading.
CoinQX.com uses a proprietary platform that will allow account holders to securely trade any and all digital currencies.
Digital currency traders are now able to register with CoinQX.com to begin trading securely with ease and efficiency.
CoinQX.com is also a unique platform allowing users to trade any pairs of coins in any combination and allow anyone to add their own virtual currency.
"CoinQX.com is on the cusp of becoming a global, unified, all-inclusive digital exchange that seeks to integrate a wide range of services for crypto-currency traders, both retail and institutional," the company said.
The polished interface, designed with the user in mind, offers an easy-to-use, customizable platform, while still maintaining a robust, highly secured backend.
For additional security measures, the company will also require traders to complete a two-step verification process for account login, withdrawals, deposits and other transactions.
CoinQX.com also utilizes a "know your customer" or KYC verification process to protect sensitive trader information.
The front-end suite will also provide traders with a comprehensive market view with advanced functionality including customizable market depth, time and sales, advanced charting with overlays, drawing tools, customizable time-frames and indicators and algorithmic trading.
About the company:
CoinQX.com is a project of First Bitcoin Capital Corp., a developing Canadian-based mining company currently holding gold mining concessions in Venezuela. The company entered the crypto-currency industry in the beginning of 2014.. It is the first vertically-integrated consolidation publicly traded company of the Bitcoin and crypto-currency marketplace.
SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This press release includes various "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which represent the Company's expectations or beliefs concerning future events. Statements containing expressions such as "believes," "anticipates," "intends," or "expects," used in the Company's press releases and in Disclosure Statements and Reports filed with the Over the Counter Markets through the OTC Disclosure and News Service are intended to identify forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Although the Company believes its expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions within the bounds of its knowledge of its business and operations, there can be no assurances that actual results will not differ materially from expected results. The Company cautions that these and similar statements included in this report are further qualified by important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date thereof.
Contacts:info@CoinQX.com;info@bitcoincapitalcorp.com
SOURCE:First Bitcoin Capital Corp. |
1,385,289,900 | 2013-11-24 10:45:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [8045]} | {} | The Fed Is Widening the Income Gap…and That’s a Good Thing | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-widening-income-gap-good-104500570.html | The Fiscal Times | http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/ | At her confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee this month, Janet Yellen faced questions from senators on both sides of the aisle about whether the central bank’s monetary stimulus is an“elitist,” “trickle down” policythat disproportionately benefits the wealthy and exacerbates income inequality.
"One of my concerns is that the Fed’s monetary policy doesn’t do enough to serve all Americans," said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH). “It’s not clear to me, and more importantly, it’s not clear to the many Americans who have not seen a raise in a number of years, that this policy increases wages and incomes for workers on Main Street.”
Related: Are We Suffering from 'Secular Stagnation?'
It’s a charge that critics of the Fed have been leveling for a long time about the bank’s extraordinarily low interest rates and large scale “quantitative easing” asset purchases. Ethan Harris, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, sums up the complaints in a new note to clients:
“Critics argue that the Fed is creating higher financial sector profits and a booming stock market, but unemployment remains high and wage growth remains low. By stimulating home prices, the Fed is making it harder for low-income families to buy homes. By keeping interest rates low, the Fed is punishing people on fixed incomes. Finally, by pushing up inflation, the Fed is lowering the real spending power of average Americans. In sum, the critics conclude, the Fed should stop hurting Joe Six Pack and immediately normalize monetary policy.”
Do those charges hold up? Yellen, a key architect of the Fed’s stimulus measures, acknowledged that “low interest rates harm savers,” but they also have a broader ripple effect that extends through the economy, helping both the unemployed as well as those who have jobs and would benefit from increased wages that would result from a stronger economy. A couple of recent reports shed some more light on Yellen’s defense.
The first is adiscussion paperreleased this month by the McKinsey Global Institute that examines how and how much low rates have hurt savers. The authors looked at how different players in the U.S., U.K. and Eurozone economies have fared under ultra-low interest rates over the last five years. They found that the governments in question benefitted by $1.6 trillion, while non-financial companies and U.S. banks – but not European ones – also came out winners. (Troublingly for the economies being studied, though, higher corporate profits have not resulted in higher corporate investment, the report finds, “possibly as a result of uncertainty about the strength of the economic recovery, as well as tighter lending standards.”)
The losers from years of ultra-low rates, according to McKinsey, have been pension plans, life insurers and, yes, households. McKinsey found that households in these countries have lost $630 billion in net interest income, including some $360 billion lost in the U.S.
Those numbers don’t look good for Joe Six Pack, but the details of McKinsey’s findings make them appear decidedly better. The authors note that the effects of low interest rates vary greatly by age group (see the McKinsey chart below), with younger households that are net borrowers benefitting and older savers losing out. Households headed by someone between the ages of 35 and 44 have gotten, on average, $1,700 more in annual income because of the lower rates, while those headed by someone 75 or older have lost $2,700 a year.
Here are the key lines, though, for those worried about a widening income gap: “Across income percentiles in the United States, the richest 10 percent own about 90 percent of net financial assets,” the McKinsey report notes. “It is this group whose net interest income has fallen, while other income groups have seen minimal change.”
Interest income is only part of the picture, of course, and the McKinsey report notes that the hits to household income may be offset by gains in asset prices. House prices in the U.S. and U.K. may have been as much as 15 percent higher at the end of 2012 than they would have been without ultra-low rates, McKinsey’s report says. (Surprisingly, the report found that the impact of low interest rates on equity prices may be smaller than is widely thought.) “If one accepts that house prices and bond prices are higher today than they otherwise would have been as a result of ultra-low interest rates, the increase in household wealth and possible additional consumption it has enabled would far outweigh the income lost to households,” the authors write.
Those rising asset prices have been they key mechanism widening the wealth gap between “haves” and “have nots,” but they don’t necessarily mean that Joe Six Pack is suffering more than he would have been. And as Merrill Lynch’s Harris detailed in his note to clients on Friday, tightening monetary policy woudn’t be an effective solution to the problem. Harris took on criticism of the Fed’s policies point by point and offered a more detailed long-term defense than the Fed’s incoming chairwoman did at her hearing:
1. Income inequality has been rising globally for much longer than the Fed has been driving interest rates down or making its “quantitative easing” asset purchases. The share of income going to the top 1 percent of households in the U.S. has been rising since the 1970s, and has continued whether the Fed was raising rates or lowering them.
2. The labor market recovery since the Great Recession is only now getting to the point where wages may rise. That’s because, after an economic downturn, business profits tend to bounce back first as the high rate of joblessness gives workers little negotiating leverage and keeps wages down. It’s only after the recovery is further along and the unemployment rate drops that employers face a more pressure to raise wages. “Ironically, critics of the Fed are suggesting that the Fed should give up on moving the economy into the second, labor-friendly, stage of the economic expansion,” Harris writes.
3. Fueling the housing recovery doesn’t just help the wealthy. “Lower interest rates help raise home prices — and stop foreclosures — precisely because they make homes more affordable for everyone,” Harris writes, adding that the National Association of Realtors Housing Affordability Index hit a record high earlier this year, even as home prices continued their rebound. “Again,” Harris says, “the irony here is that by doing exactly what critics favor—and threatening to taper—the Fed is hurting affordability for low-income people.”
4. The argument that rising inflation undercuts consumers’ spending power stems from what Harris calls “a fundamental misunderstanding of the word ‘inflation.’” The term refers to “a generalized rise in the price of everything—goods, services and labor,” with the Fed’s ultimate goal being to push inflation back to 2 percent and to have working wages grow at a more normal pace of 3.5 percent to 4 percent.
5. Harris sums up by noting that raising rates to help savers today could backfire by sapping economic momentum – and that Japan’s long struggles with a stagnant economy serve as a cautionary tale in this regard. “Raising interest rates in the U.S. today is a great way to penalize savers in the years ahead,” Harris argues.
So, yes, the Fed may be making the rich even richer right now, but the ultimate goal is to restore interest rates to more normal levels by restoring the economy to faster growth. “As in every business cycle recovery, easy Fed policy has temporarily exacerbated the long-term widening of income disparities, but ultimately easy policy means low unemployment and stronger labor income,” Harris writes. “Fortunately, the Fed understands that the fastest path between two points is not always a straight line.”
Unfortunately for many Americans, the fastest path can still feel awfully rocky.
Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
• How Secret Global Trade Talks Can Destroy the Internet
• CEO Pay: Why Even the Swiss Are Riled Up
• Why Regulating Bitcoin is Like Herding Cats |
1,385,379,000 | 2013-11-25 11:30:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [131, 895, 1084, 1127, 1493, 1580, 1808, 1953, 2040, 2940, 3268, 3288, 3544, 3915, 3954, 4007]} | {"Bitcoin": [48]} | There Is A 'Very Surprising' Connection Between Bitcoin's Creator And The Alleged Founder Of The Silk Road | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/study-very-surprising-connection-between-113049513.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | UPDATE: The researchers have retracted their claim,click here to read the story »
The two most important moments in the history of Bitcoin are its creation, and the founding of illicit goods and services site Silk Road, which created the first ever market for the digital currency.
Now, two Israeli mathematicians, Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir of the Weizzman Institute south of Tel Aviv, write in a new paper (first reported on byJohn Markoff at Bits) that they've found a "very surprising connection" between the individual or individuals behind the first and the individual allegedly behind the second.
In October, the FBI arrested San Francisco resident Ross Ulbricht, accusing him of being Dread Pirate Roberts, the hacker handle of the guy who ran Silk Road. They seized his laptop, shuttered Silk Road, and after considerable effort — 25 days — they took control of all 144,336 of Ulbricht's Bitcoins, which would now be worth more than $115 million, and transferred them into FBI-controlled accounts.
Upon doing so, the agency gave anyone a way to trace the history of Ulbricht's Bitcoin wealth. Although both parties in a Bitcoin transaction are anonymous, the details of all transactions — the address of the buyer and seller, the quantity, and the date — are publicly known, chronicled in a master ledger which can be foundhereorhere(the researchers used the former) . So if you can match a given amount with a given personality, it's possible to excavate the entirety of that person's Bitcoin banking records. Given the quantities seized, it was immediately obvious which Bitcoins had belonged to Ulbricht, though the FBI publicly released the address of the seized funds account anyway.
Out of curiosity, Ron and Shamir traced the history of every transaction executed by addresses connected to the Bitcoins seized by the FBI. Eventually they made a surprising discovery: on March 20 of this year, an Ulbricht-controlled account received 1,000 Bitcoins from an account created on Jan. 16, 2009 — just one week after the first-ever Bitcoins were mined. That account accumulated over 77,600 BTCs, mostly through mining, until 2011, when it began shooting off its balance into separate accounts, as illustrated here.
Ron/Shamir
Such a transaction is unusual, they explain:
"Such a single large transfer does not represent the typical behaviour of a buyer who opens an account on Silk Road in order to purchase some narcotics (such buyers are expected to make an initial deposit of tens or hundreds of dollars, and to top the account off whenever they buy additional merchandise). It could represent either large scale activity on Silk Road, or some form of investment or partnership, but this is pure speculation.
Instead, it may be evidence of something more profound:
"The short path we found (which is depicted in Figure 6) suggests (but does not prove) the existence of a surprising link between the two mysterious figures of the Bitcoin community, Satoshi Nakamoto and DPR. It is reasonable to assume that all the accounts described along the top of Figure 6 belong to the same person, but to be on the safe side we refer to him as a “Founder” rather than as Satoshi Nakamoto. We are sure that analyzing this figure will start a very vigorous debate in the Bitcoin community."
Bitcoin aficionados themselves like to play down the importance of knowing the identity of Satoshi, heralding him/her/them as more of a benevolent specter who created a universe and whose true identity is immaterial to that world's success.
But given that Bitcoins are now worth $800 and rising — and assuming that Satoshi owns or owned a lot of them (some suggest he has 1 million), many still wonder whether a secret multi-millionaire now stalks the land.
Meanwhile, for the latest in everything we know about Satoshi Nakamoto,check out this chart from Chartgirl.com.
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• The Value Of SecondMarket's Bitcoin Trust Just Broke $50 Million
• Bitcoin Prices Just Hit Another Record
• Here's What Bitcoin Gets Right |
1,385,379,000 | 2013-11-25 11:30:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [131, 895, 1084, 1127, 1493, 1580, 1808, 1953, 2040, 2940, 3268, 3288, 3544, 3915, 3954, 4007]} | {"Bitcoin": [48]} | There Is A 'Very Surprising' Connection Between Bitcoin's Creator And The Alleged Founder Of The Silk Road | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/study-very-surprising-connection-between-113049513.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | UPDATE: The researchers have retracted their claim,click here to read the story »
The two most important moments in the history of Bitcoin are its creation, and the founding of illicit goods and services site Silk Road, which created the first ever market for the digital currency.
Now, two Israeli mathematicians, Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir of the Weizzman Institute south of Tel Aviv, write in a new paper (first reported on byJohn Markoff at Bits) that they've found a "very surprising connection" between the individual or individuals behind the first and the individual allegedly behind the second.
In October, the FBI arrested San Francisco resident Ross Ulbricht, accusing him of being Dread Pirate Roberts, the hacker handle of the guy who ran Silk Road. They seized his laptop, shuttered Silk Road, and after considerable effort — 25 days — they took control of all 144,336 of Ulbricht's Bitcoins, which would now be worth more than $115 million, and transferred them into FBI-controlled accounts.
Upon doing so, the agency gave anyone a way to trace the history of Ulbricht's Bitcoin wealth. Although both parties in a Bitcoin transaction are anonymous, the details of all transactions — the address of the buyer and seller, the quantity, and the date — are publicly known, chronicled in a master ledger which can be foundhereorhere(the researchers used the former) . So if you can match a given amount with a given personality, it's possible to excavate the entirety of that person's Bitcoin banking records. Given the quantities seized, it was immediately obvious which Bitcoins had belonged to Ulbricht, though the FBI publicly released the address of the seized funds account anyway.
Out of curiosity, Ron and Shamir traced the history of every transaction executed by addresses connected to the Bitcoins seized by the FBI. Eventually they made a surprising discovery: on March 20 of this year, an Ulbricht-controlled account received 1,000 Bitcoins from an account created on Jan. 16, 2009 — just one week after the first-ever Bitcoins were mined. That account accumulated over 77,600 BTCs, mostly through mining, until 2011, when it began shooting off its balance into separate accounts, as illustrated here.
Ron/Shamir
Such a transaction is unusual, they explain:
"Such a single large transfer does not represent the typical behaviour of a buyer who opens an account on Silk Road in order to purchase some narcotics (such buyers are expected to make an initial deposit of tens or hundreds of dollars, and to top the account off whenever they buy additional merchandise). It could represent either large scale activity on Silk Road, or some form of investment or partnership, but this is pure speculation.
Instead, it may be evidence of something more profound:
"The short path we found (which is depicted in Figure 6) suggests (but does not prove) the existence of a surprising link between the two mysterious figures of the Bitcoin community, Satoshi Nakamoto and DPR. It is reasonable to assume that all the accounts described along the top of Figure 6 belong to the same person, but to be on the safe side we refer to him as a “Founder” rather than as Satoshi Nakamoto. We are sure that analyzing this figure will start a very vigorous debate in the Bitcoin community."
Bitcoin aficionados themselves like to play down the importance of knowing the identity of Satoshi, heralding him/her/them as more of a benevolent specter who created a universe and whose true identity is immaterial to that world's success.
But given that Bitcoins are now worth $800 and rising — and assuming that Satoshi owns or owned a lot of them (some suggest he has 1 million), many still wonder whether a secret multi-millionaire now stalks the land.
Meanwhile, for the latest in everything we know about Satoshi Nakamoto,check out this chart from Chartgirl.com.
More From Business Insider
• The Value Of SecondMarket's Bitcoin Trust Just Broke $50 Million
• Bitcoin Prices Just Hit Another Record
• Here's What Bitcoin Gets Right |
1,385,381,700 | 2013-11-25 12:15:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [615]} | {} | 10 Tech Things You Need To Know This Morning | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-tech-things-know-morning-121555804.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Yodeanecdotal via Yahoo
Yahoo employees are resisting the switch to Yahoo Mail for their corporate email accounts
Happy Monday. Here's some news to kickstart your week:
1. TV is dying and here are some charts that prove it.
2. Apple has confirmed its acquisition of 3-D sensor startup PrimeSense.PrimeSense was reportedly bought for about $360 million.
3. Uber has partnered with Toyota and General Motors to help its drivers buy more affordable cars.
4. Yahoo employees don't want to switch their corporate email accounts to Yahoo Mail.
5. A new study found there is a surprising connection between the creator of Bitcoin and the alleged founder of Silk Road.
6. A woman's angry, tech-savvy ex hacked her phones, voicemail and computer to block her from her digital life.Unfortunately, that's what domestic violence is starting to look like in the digital age.
7. Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon, explains why he wants his elderly, sick father to die immediately.He believes doctor-assisted suicides should be legal.
8. That 3 hour and 12 minute football game you like to watch every Sunday?On average, you'll see 100 commercials during it and only 11 minutes of real action with the football.
9. Google-owned Waze now lets its users receive driving directions from celebrities via voice navigation.
10. 9 entrepreneurs, including Aaron Levie of Box and Max Levchin of Slide and PayPal, reveal why they decided to sell for big bucks or pass on life-changing acquisitions.
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1,385,381,700 | 2013-11-25 12:15:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [615]} | {} | 10 Tech Things You Need To Know This Morning | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/10-tech-things-know-morning-121555804.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | Yodeanecdotal via Yahoo
Yahoo employees are resisting the switch to Yahoo Mail for their corporate email accounts
Happy Monday. Here's some news to kickstart your week:
1. TV is dying and here are some charts that prove it.
2. Apple has confirmed its acquisition of 3-D sensor startup PrimeSense.PrimeSense was reportedly bought for about $360 million.
3. Uber has partnered with Toyota and General Motors to help its drivers buy more affordable cars.
4. Yahoo employees don't want to switch their corporate email accounts to Yahoo Mail.
5. A new study found there is a surprising connection between the creator of Bitcoin and the alleged founder of Silk Road.
6. A woman's angry, tech-savvy ex hacked her phones, voicemail and computer to block her from her digital life.Unfortunately, that's what domestic violence is starting to look like in the digital age.
7. Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon, explains why he wants his elderly, sick father to die immediately.He believes doctor-assisted suicides should be legal.
8. That 3 hour and 12 minute football game you like to watch every Sunday?On average, you'll see 100 commercials during it and only 11 minutes of real action with the football.
9. Google-owned Waze now lets its users receive driving directions from celebrities via voice navigation.
10. 9 entrepreneurs, including Aaron Levie of Box and Max Levchin of Slide and PayPal, reveal why they decided to sell for big bucks or pass on life-changing acquisitions.
More From Business Insider
• 10 Tech Things You Need To Know This Morning
• 10 Tech Things You Need To Know This Morning
• LEAKED EMAIL: Apple's Lawyers Ask All Employees To Review The Company's Code Of Conduct |
1,385,400,180 | 2013-11-25 17:23:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [2331]} | {} | There's A Swanky Building In Luxembourg That's Like A Hotel Just For Rich People's Expensive Possessions | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/theres-swanky-warehouse-luxembourg-thats-172337815.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | LuxFreeport.lu
They never really left their perch in the first place, but rich people are definitely on top of the world again. Pick your evidence: setting a record priceon a painting purchase,flipping your Gulf Stream jet,buying a flat in London for a price rivaling the GDP of a small country, orturning down a $3 billion offer for your photo-taking mobile app.
Now the global 1 Percent is investing in another new toy — but you may not notice it at first.
The Economistrecently reportedon the existence of an unassuming warehouse outside Luxembourg's main airport that's been under construction.
But this is no ordinary hangar. Instead, it is a "freeport," designed to house the collectibles, like art or gold, of the 1%, shielding them from the taxman and offering layers of anonymity not available at other high-end storage facilities. As the Economist explains:
"[Freeports'] attractions are similar to those offered by offshore financial centres: security and confidentiality, not much scrutiny, the ability for owners to hide behind nominees, and an array of tax advantages. This special treatment is possible because goods in freeports are technically in transit, even if in reality the ports are used more and more as permanent homes for accumulated wealth. If anyone knows how to game the rules, it is the super-rich and their advisers."
Here's the thing: the place is awesome — way more awesome than it should be for just a warehouse. Remember the village in the movie "Gattaca" where genetically superior beings prepared to launch into space? It looks like like that, but with a way more ludicrous soundtrack.
An architectural feat: arched trusses, isolation booths, lots of wide-open space.
LuxFreeport.lu
It's half art museum ...
LuxFreeport.lu
... half 1% Valhalla.
LuxFreeport.lu
Glass walls, sky-high ceilings, and electrifying security.
LuxFreeport.lu
Pointilist windows and rooftop turrets:
LuxFreeport.lu
"My possessions unload from the front."
LuxFreeport.lu
Crates, please, not boxes — we're rich, thank you.
LuxFreepor.lu
But you really need to watch the whole video, which is only about two minutes, and contains the New Age background music, to get a sense of how the super rich live these days.
Click here for the full video »
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1,385,402,996 | 2013-11-25 18:09:56+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [487, 1668, 1891, 2841, 3797, 3830], "BTC": [1957, 2175]} | {"Bitcoin": [32, 49]} | How Thieves Stole $1 Million In Bitcoins From A 'Bitcoin Bank' | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/thieves-stole-1-million-bitcoins-180956571.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | YouTube/Newfination
BIPS CEO Kris Henriksen
If you're a smart enough hacker, you can break into a company that stores bitcoins for people and wipe out their bank accounts. Thieves have done just that with BIPs, one of Europe’s biggest bitcoin payment processors, the companyannounced on its website.
Thecrooks walked away with 1,295 bitcoins, BIPs founder and CEO Kris Henriksen, told his customersvia a post to the company's online forums. That's about $990,00based on today's value of Bitcoinson Coindesk (about $760 per coin).
BIPs offered a service that lets merchants accept bitcoins and exchange them into other currencies. As part of that service, it stored people's bitcoins for free in what's known as a bitcoin wallet. That's akin to a bank account. Hackers broke into that service on Friday and wiped out people's wallets, Henriksen said.
The company explained how the hackers broke in: First they created what's known as a deniel of service attack, which is when computers on the Internet send a website so many hits that the website can't handle all the traffic and it shuts down.
That hack let them discover a weakness in the website. Then they did a second attack two days later, broke into company's network, controlled the company's computer storage systems where the bitcoins were stored, and transferred the money into their own bitcoin wallet, Henriksen said in his blog post.
After the robbery, Henriksen tried to shrug off some of the blame,telling his customers,"Web Wallets are like a regular wallet that you carry cash in and not meant to keep large amounts in."
Needless to say, the people who were using BPS's free web wallet to store their Bitcoins are not happy that they were robbed. One user,"cubicdissection" wrote:
As someone who pursues and gets merchants to sign up for your service, you surely realize that many if not most of them are not well versed in Bitcoin. At NO point did you EVER say hey you shouldn't keep your BTC with us. In fact, your website said: Your data is secure at BIPS ... BIPS protects your payment information with industry-leading security and fraud protection. ... So yeah, I felt pretty god---- secure leaving my BTC balance there. ... So basically ALL balances are gone?
Here's thewarning about the robbery that BIPsposted to its website:
BIPS temporarily closes consumer wallet initiative after security breach
Nov19To protect the successful merchant processing business BIPS has decided to temporarily close down its consumer wallet initiative.BIPS has been a target of a coordinated attack and subsequent security breached. Several consumer wallets have been compromised and BIPS will be contacting the affected users.As a consequence BIPS will temporarily close down the wallet initiative to focus on real-time merchant processing business which does not include storing of Bitcoins. Subsequently BIPS will consider to reintroduce the wallet initiative with a re-architected security model.The consumer wallet initiative has not been BIPS core business and as such regrettably affecting several users has not affected BIPS merchant acquiring.All existing users will be asked to transfer bitcoins to other wallet solutions, and users affected by the security breach will be contacted.Additional support information:BIPS help desk system is currently not accessible and will not be re-enabled until an alternative hosting solution has been arranged for this. In the mean time, support is reachable via email to support(at)bips(dot)me. Previously submitted tickets need to be resubmitted via email. Please be patient and allow 24-72 hours to receive a reply.
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1,385,415,960 | 2013-11-25 21:46:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [22, 310, 382, 477, 523, 598, 734, 1142, 1184, 1446, 1504, 1651, 1884, 1911, 2079, 2153, 2162, 2306, 2503, 2981, 3123, 3277, 3853, 4084, 4127, 4151, 4452, 4676, 4734]} | {"Bitcoin": [23]} | 'Litecoin Is Silver To Bitcoin's Gold' — Here's What That Actually Means | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-deal-litecoin-robin-bitcoins-214632375.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | At $800, the price of Bitcoin is now so great that it threatens to shut out some mainstream users.
You may be wondering whether there were ever any mainstream users in the first place. But Charlie Lee, a former Googler and MIT grad, recognized such an audience did exist. In 2011, two years after the birth of Bitcoin, the former Googler and MIT grad decided to create a version of Bitcoin that would make it more accessible.
He called it Litecoin.
"I think Satoshi [Nakamoto, Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator] is great, and Bitcoin is awesome," Lee said in a recent interview with BI. "I didn't fix Bitcoin. I just made small changes that made [Litecoin] a little bit better."
Litecoin is not the only digital currency to have mounted Bitcoin’s virtual coattails. Coinmarketcaplistsabout two-dozen ones who’ve seen their prices increase in the past few months. But Litecoin appears to be the first among these secondary equals, something reflected in its $282 million market cap — 5x greater than the next largest currency, Peercoin.
If you're at all familiar with Litecoin, you've probably heard it described, by Lee or others, as "silver to Bitcoin's gold." But if you don't believe Bitcoin is worth much in the first place, that may mean nothing to you. So we asked Lee to elaborate, and he made a convincing case for where Litecoin will fit into the for-now expanding realm of digital currency.
"It's more abundant, and more lightweight" than Bitcoin, he says.
Here's what that means. Only 21 million Bitcoin will ever get created, and it's projected that won't occur until 2040. Although in theory this has no practical effect on its value if the Bitcoin economy truly takes off thanks to demand remaining consistent, that fixed amount will help keep prices elevated.
Lee designed Litecoin so that 84 million units would be created. And if the Litecoin economy scales up to where Bitcoin evangelists insist Bitcoin should be, the same pseudo-scarcity effect could someday be seen in Litecoin prices.
In addition, Litecoin is not subject to the“arms race”currently seen among Bitcoin miners looking to corner the market on acquiring large amounts of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is built aroundhash cryptographythat is supposed to get more complex — and thus require more expensive computing power to mine — as the Bitcoin economy expands and grows in value. But this has allowed individuals with more efficient computer chips — in other words, ones that require less electricity power to mine a given amount of Bitcoin — to get the jump on more conventional miners. Litecoin eliminates that advantage by using an entirely different cryptography program, called Scrypt, where the limiting factor is memory, not processing efficiency. That means you'd have to buy a greater quantity of computer hardware to beat the program, not just design a better chip.
“There will be less of a cartel of miners,” Lee says.
Finally, Lee says Litecoin transactions enjoy faster "confirmation" times. For a Bitcoin transaction to be completely processed, it must receive a number of confirmations from other users who've located the transfer on the Bitcoin's master ledger,the Blockchain. This usually takes about 10 minutes. That doesn't mean you have to wait around at a cash register if you're using Bitcoin to pay for groceries,as we have documented. But those transactions depend on temporary confirmations.
With Litecoin, Lee says, confirmations take just two-and-a-half minutes. So although the odds of a temporary confirmation not being confirmed on the Blockchain are minuscule, Litecoin eliminates the problem entirely.
So maybe it's better to understand Litecoin as "silver" in the medieval sense of the word: designed to be carried around in your virtual pocket for daily transactions. "If Litecoin truly succeeds, people will be using it for everyday purchases, and Bitcoin for large purposes," Lee says.
Digital currency users appear to have grasped Litecoin's utility relatively swiftly. It's now worth around $10, as shown in this chart...
ltc-charts.com
...And its price surge corresponded to Bitcoin's mid-month explosion in November.
Bitcoin Charts
And like Bitcoin, Litecoin has come a long way in a very short amount of time.
ltc-charts.com
Lee estimates Litecoin is about two years behind in both price and adoption. Right now the online retail outlets taking Litecoinare somewhat limited, though will surely grow with the price of Litecoin. But, he says, Bitcoin itself is still decades away from reaching its full potential.
"It's still in an inflationary stage," he says. "Once that stops, in 2040, that's when that's when things get interesting."
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1,385,415,960 | 2013-11-25 21:46:00+00:00 | {"Bitcoin": [22, 310, 382, 477, 523, 598, 734, 1142, 1184, 1446, 1504, 1651, 1884, 1911, 2079, 2153, 2162, 2306, 2503, 2981, 3123, 3277, 3853, 4084, 4127, 4151, 4452, 4676, 4734]} | {"Bitcoin": [23]} | 'Litecoin Is Silver To Bitcoin's Gold' — Here's What That Actually Means | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-deal-litecoin-robin-bitcoins-214632375.html | Business Insider | http://www.businessinsider.com/ | At $800, the price of Bitcoin is now so great that it threatens to shut out some mainstream users.
You may be wondering whether there were ever any mainstream users in the first place. But Charlie Lee, a former Googler and MIT grad, recognized such an audience did exist. In 2011, two years after the birth of Bitcoin, the former Googler and MIT grad decided to create a version of Bitcoin that would make it more accessible.
He called it Litecoin.
"I think Satoshi [Nakamoto, Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator] is great, and Bitcoin is awesome," Lee said in a recent interview with BI. "I didn't fix Bitcoin. I just made small changes that made [Litecoin] a little bit better."
Litecoin is not the only digital currency to have mounted Bitcoin’s virtual coattails. Coinmarketcaplistsabout two-dozen ones who’ve seen their prices increase in the past few months. But Litecoin appears to be the first among these secondary equals, something reflected in its $282 million market cap — 5x greater than the next largest currency, Peercoin.
If you're at all familiar with Litecoin, you've probably heard it described, by Lee or others, as "silver to Bitcoin's gold." But if you don't believe Bitcoin is worth much in the first place, that may mean nothing to you. So we asked Lee to elaborate, and he made a convincing case for where Litecoin will fit into the for-now expanding realm of digital currency.
"It's more abundant, and more lightweight" than Bitcoin, he says.
Here's what that means. Only 21 million Bitcoin will ever get created, and it's projected that won't occur until 2040. Although in theory this has no practical effect on its value if the Bitcoin economy truly takes off thanks to demand remaining consistent, that fixed amount will help keep prices elevated.
Lee designed Litecoin so that 84 million units would be created. And if the Litecoin economy scales up to where Bitcoin evangelists insist Bitcoin should be, the same pseudo-scarcity effect could someday be seen in Litecoin prices.
In addition, Litecoin is not subject to the“arms race”currently seen among Bitcoin miners looking to corner the market on acquiring large amounts of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is built aroundhash cryptographythat is supposed to get more complex — and thus require more expensive computing power to mine — as the Bitcoin economy expands and grows in value. But this has allowed individuals with more efficient computer chips — in other words, ones that require less electricity power to mine a given amount of Bitcoin — to get the jump on more conventional miners. Litecoin eliminates that advantage by using an entirely different cryptography program, called Scrypt, where the limiting factor is memory, not processing efficiency. That means you'd have to buy a greater quantity of computer hardware to beat the program, not just design a better chip.
“There will be less of a cartel of miners,” Lee says.
Finally, Lee says Litecoin transactions enjoy faster "confirmation" times. For a Bitcoin transaction to be completely processed, it must receive a number of confirmations from other users who've located the transfer on the Bitcoin's master ledger,the Blockchain. This usually takes about 10 minutes. That doesn't mean you have to wait around at a cash register if you're using Bitcoin to pay for groceries,as we have documented. But those transactions depend on temporary confirmations.
With Litecoin, Lee says, confirmations take just two-and-a-half minutes. So although the odds of a temporary confirmation not being confirmed on the Blockchain are minuscule, Litecoin eliminates the problem entirely.
So maybe it's better to understand Litecoin as "silver" in the medieval sense of the word: designed to be carried around in your virtual pocket for daily transactions. "If Litecoin truly succeeds, people will be using it for everyday purchases, and Bitcoin for large purposes," Lee says.
Digital currency users appear to have grasped Litecoin's utility relatively swiftly. It's now worth around $10, as shown in this chart...
ltc-charts.com
...And its price surge corresponded to Bitcoin's mid-month explosion in November.
Bitcoin Charts
And like Bitcoin, Litecoin has come a long way in a very short amount of time.
ltc-charts.com
Lee estimates Litecoin is about two years behind in both price and adoption. Right now the online retail outlets taking Litecoinare somewhat limited, though will surely grow with the price of Litecoin. But, he says, Bitcoin itself is still decades away from reaching its full potential.
"It's still in an inflationary stage," he says. "Once that stops, in 2040, that's when that's when things get interesting."
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