Crypto Analysis: Ronnie Moas Raises Bitcoin Target Again: $20,000 By Start Of 2018

November has been a busy week for famed stock picker Ronnie Moas who, on Nov. 4, predicted that by the beginning of 2018 Bitcoin would hit $11,000. That was recently blown out the water, but before the target was hit, he adjusted to $14,000.

Now, Bitcoin is on its way to smashing that new target causing Moas to readjust for the third time in a month as the digital currency revels in a new era of adoption and acceptance.

Moas looks at Bitcoin as a whole, incorporating all the chain splits in his split-adjusted price is and considering the price of the forked Bitcoin chains alongside the original was $12,740 when Moas made his new prediction, $14,000 looked undervalued again.

$20,000 is a month away

Moas now puts the line in the sand at $20,000 for the split-adjusted price when the new year hits. Looking at how things have gone so far for Moas, a month is a long time, and perhaps $20,000 will be broken before that time.

Many pickers, investors and money movers have thrown their hats into the ring trying to hit the sweet spot of this volatile asset when it comes to prediction.

Tom Lee, rather conservatively, set a Bitcoin growth of 40 percent to happen by the middle of 2018. His prediction put him at $11,500. That prediction was made a week ago, and in that time Bitcoin topped at around $11,300.

Max Keiser has a much more bullish view, but over a longer time frame as the host of Russia Today’s Keiser Report believes that $100,000 Bitcoin is an eventuality.

Why split-adjusted?

Moas, as one of the most well-regarded stock pickers, is clearly in the Bitcoin game for its investment potential rather than the technology side which has seen different factions at war with each other. Some people are vehemently Bitcoin Cash supporters, and others true fans of the original chain.

Moas, however, with his investor’s hat on, sees that by buying Bitcoin he not only received free Bitcoin Cash, but also free Bitcoin Gold, and thus counts them together in his portfolio, urging others to d the same as a diversification strategy.

Bitcoin Diamond and the real gold

“I am raising my 2018 fork- and split-adjusted price target on Bitcoin from $14,000 to $20,000,” Moas explained. “The current price is $10,720 and the split-adjusted price is now $12,740 when factoring in Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin Diamond.”

Bitcoin Diamond is another fork of the Bitcoin chain that went largely unnoticed. Its aim is to switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake after mining is completed - after just 10,000 blocks.

“Bitcoin is now up split-adjusted by 394 percent since my July 3 recommendation,” Moas went on. “There is no way to justify Gold $7 tln at 40X Bitcoin ($180 bln). An argument can be made that Bitcoin will be equal to Gold within 10-15 years. I do not know how much Gold there is in the ground … I do not know how much Bitcoin there is.”

Source Cointelegraph
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Coinbase: Coinbase: ‘Partial Victory’ Appears To Put End To 12-Month Legal Battle

Coinbase has hailed as a “partial victory” a court order to hand over transaction details of almost 15,000 customers to the government.

In a summary of the US exchange’s now year-long legal battle with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), communications officer David Farmer confirmed previous hints that only three percent of the original data demands would be sent to lawmakers.

The issue focuses on IRS suspicions that Bitcoin holders transacting through Coinbase were not paying appropriate taxes on profits.

After Coinbase ignored a request to inspect every transaction made through the company from 2013-2015, a court summons saw months of posturing before the IRS’ position finally became untenable.

The tax authority’s request, commentators and now legal entities confirmed, was too “broad” in its scope.

“...While today’s result is not the complete victory we hoped for, it does represent a substantial and unprecedented victory for the industry and the hundreds of thousands of customers that would have been unfairly targeted if it weren’t for our action,” Farmer said, adding Coinbase was “reviewing” the order to turn over all transactions of $20,000 or more.

The results provide a brief respite for Coinbase as its infrastructure feels the strain once again from Bitcoin price volatility.

Coinbase is performing maintenance to improve performance under high traffic given the large volumes we saw today. We expect buys and sells to be offline for 1-2 hours. Customers can still access their accounts, deposit and withdraw.

— Coinbase (@coinbase) November 30, 2017

As USD rates fluctuated by thousands of dollars over the past 48 hours, the exchange saw its servers go offline as it failed to cope with demand. Similar events occurred earlier this year as hundreds of thousands of new users opened wallets on a weekly basis.

Source Cointelegraph
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Bitcoin News: “Ban Bitcoin!” Says Nobel Prize Winner, While Ignoring FANG Losses

In a statement that will be widely approved and vilified by opposing camps, Joseph Stiglitz said on Bloomberg TV that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin should be banned. His commentary is based on analysis saying that the market for Bitcoin is driven mostly by its potential to circumvent government agencies.

His rant continued, stating that the Bitcoin market will ‘go up, and then come down,’ leaving many investors injured, and therefore it should be banned, adding that it doesn’t serve any ‘socially useful function.’

Ban it all, Joe, ban it all

Apparently, Dr. Stiglitz may also desire to ban the famous FANG stocks (Facebook, Apple, Netflix, and Google), which, on the same day as the recent price decline for Bitcoin, faced far greater losses.

In fact, while Bitcoin lost around $3 bln in market cap, the FANG stocks lost $60 bln - twenty times as much. If consumer protection is the main goal, the FANG stocks are a far greater risk, and worthy of the ban.

Impossible?

In the final analysis, however, regardless of the opinions of economists, the very nature of Bitcoin may make it impossible to ban. Instead, governments must simply deal with the cryptocurrency, and regulate its trade in reasonable and rational ways. According to Kain Warwick, Founder of Havven:

"Thankfully it’s somewhat irrelevant whether anyone in particular thinks Bitcoin should be banned, because one of its strongest points is that it is, in practice, not able to be banned."

Source Cointelegraph 

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Bitcoin News: Infamous Discarded Hard Drive Holding 7,500 Bitcoins Would be Worth $80 Million Today

During the summer of 2013, while cleaning out his desk, a Welsh man named James Howells threw away a hard drive from his broken Dell Laptop.

Unfortunately, he realized several months later that the drive held 7,500 Bitcoin mined back in 2009. At the time, with Bitcoin approaching and finally just exceeding $1,000 in price, the scrapped hard drive would have been worth over $7 mln.

The story created a lot of hype about the rising the value of Bitcoin and the fortunes - or misfortunes - of the currency’s first miners and investors. Many of them had dabbled with the currency while it was in its infancy, only to forget about it and fail to backup their wallets.

Howells, who essentially dumped $7.5 mln (£4 mln) onto a landfill in Newport, Wales was of course furious, disappointed and dumbstruck. Over the next few years, he may have come to terms with his loss, only to have old wounds reopened as the currency began its long climb this year. At press time, Bitcoin’s price stands at $10,700, giving that trashed hard drive a value of over $80 mln.

‘That’s a bad idea’

Howell had mined those 7,500 coins himself as a hobby back when Bitcoin was a mere plaything for the technologically inclined. Howells related:

"You know when you put something in the bin, and in your head, say to yourself 'that's a bad idea'? I really did have that.”

Howells explains how he stopped mining when his girlfriend complained about the noise from the laptop and the heat it was producing. When he spilled lemonade on the laptop the following year, he dismantled it for parts. He initially kept the hard drive for a few years before finally discarding it.

Back in 2013, Howells said:

"I'm at the point where it's either laugh about it or cry about it. Why aren't I out there with a shovel now? I think I'm just resigned to never being able to find it."

Once can only imagine how the unfortunate Howells feels today.

“Don’t tell my Wife”

Howells isn’t the only person to experience the pain of such financial loss. An Australian man, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of the wrath of his wife, has also come forward with a tale of thousands of missing Bitcoin.

Alex, as he wants to be called, describes how in 2009 he mined “thousands, plural” of Bitcoin as part of a novel new idea. Then when the program for mining got a little too big and cumbersome, he gave up, deleted the program, and stashed his Bitcoin on a cheap USB. He said:

“The thinking was that it’s offline, not on my PC, so in case something bad happened to the PC — [if] it blew up, or [was] hacked — I still had a backup.”

Around the end of 2013, when the Bitcoin price peaked at just over $1,000, he suddenly remembered his wallet:

“[I plugged] the USB stick back in to try and access the file, but the stick died. It was one of those cheap made-in-China ones.”

Just like Howells, Alex has had to watch the Bitcoin price balloon, counting the tens of millions of dollars he lost everytime a new milestone is reached.

“Worst mistake of my life. Never back up anything on a cheap Chinese-made disk or USB stick.”

Lost forever

Other stories of lost Bitcoins abound, including that of a Gizmodo editor who threw away a hard drive containing 1,400 Bitcoins in 2012. He paid $25 for the coins, at an average price of only 1.5 cents each. They would now be worth almost $15 mln.

These cases and others inspired a new study that has estimated that as many as four million Bitcoin are gone forever. The study puts the majority of the lost coins in the category of ‘out of circulation’ as of course, those coins still exist on the Blockchain, they just cannot be accessed.

One difficulty in estimating the number of “lost” Bitcoin is uncertainty over whether Satoshi is still alive and still has access to his private keys. The study’s numbers assume that Satoshi’s approximately one million Bitcoins are lost, but of course, nobody can be certain of that.

Keeping coins safe

One of the first rules for Bitcoin newbies is to keep your coins off exchanges where they are vulnerable to online threats. However, there are a number of offline threats that can also occur.

These two case studies show just how easy it is to lose a digital asset that is not stored online; from a broken hard drive to a corrupt USB, even misplacing the thing becomes a problem.

Matthew Unger, founder and CEO of iComply Investor Services Inc. suggested:

"Just like you keep some cash in your wallet, some in your bank account and perhaps the really valuable stuff in a safe, you need to manage digital currencies in the same way."

Source Cointelegraph

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Ethereum: Ethereum Breaks $500 For First Time In Cross-Crypto Frenzy

Ethereum has reached $500 for the first time on the strength of future plans and Indian markets opening up trading. Data from cross-exchange resource Coinmarketcap shows ETH currently trading around $525 at press time, topping new highs of $400 seen just six days ago.

The moves echo those of Bitcoin, which has added proportionately similar gains in a similar timeframe, and increased by $1000 in the past 24 hours alone. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin had unveiled the ecosystem’s roadmap at a Taiwan conference last week, eyeing Casper and other technical advances intended to address some of Ethereum’s current issues.

In addition, major Indian exchange app Zebpay added Ethereum trading as a direct response to user demand. In a blog post Monday, it revealed it would also add Litecoin, Ripple and Bitcoin Cash to its books.

Having begun the year at just $8, Ethereum is one of the miracles of 2017’s cryptocurrency explosion. Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Monero and Dash also posted new all-time highs in USD today.
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Blockchain: Borrow First This Christmas: Using Blockchain to Create Digital Trust

With Christmas just around the corner, you may be looking for some gifts for friends. Perhaps the new Playstation for your son or daughter, or a brand new iDevice for your spouse. But, as with all other things, you’re just not sure which one to buy or which features are important. And you’d hate to hear the painful words, “I love it, but I would’ve gotten the one with…”

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could borrow one of the same item from a friend, use it for a couple of weeks, and then return it? You’d know what you’re getting yourself into and you’d be able to make an informed choice. Of course, that can’t ever happen, can it?

Borrowing the future

The reason such a scenario seems impossible is because of the lack of trust among anyone but the closest of friends. But imagine if you had an inner ring of incredibly close friends…but with millions of people? You’d be able to really trust all those people with even your most prized possessions, and have confidence that you’ll get them back, no question.

This sort of circle of friends is exactly what the Rexpax team envisions. Rather than buying the next item you want to try out, only to discover you’ve made some poor feature choices, Rexpaxallows you to borrow it from a ‘friend’, give it a try, and decide what you like and don’t like. No more multiple return trips or partially disappointed loved ones.

Who’s your friend?

The barrier for a system like this is not with the borrower. When you borrow something from your friend, you know your intentions are good and you’ll definitely return the item. However, the person who owns the item you want to borrow needs to trust you…a lot…and that trust is what has been lost in the digital culture.

The Rexpax system uses Blockchain technology to allow users to share things, and for borrowers to search for those willing to share with full confidence and trust. The driving force in the platform is a proprietary cryptocurrency called Rexx.  Rexx can be earned by sharing and interacting on the platform.

This trust ecosystem is designed to be a true peer-to-peer friendship, where users loan their things on the system, then receive them back again and even monetize them while they’re not being used by their owner.

Move your home online

Further, Rexpax has designed a part of the platform called ‘home online’, where users are able to build ‘rooms’ and ‘shelves’ and then display their items for borrowing or for sale, or just for ‘showing off’ what they have to other users. This provides a means for dialogue and also for ways for users to look for products they need to borrow.

Millennials are no longer limited by the patterns of the previous generation. The willingness to borrow rather than to own, and the ability to build genuine trust with technology, rather than with relationships, makes value real and sharable. And because the platform is built on Blockchain technology, it is functional and protected.

The system is designed to unite people around things, and around methods of trust. It’s simple enough - just like the library, why own something, when you can just borrow it?

Source Cointelegraph

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Bitcoin News: House of Lords Recommends Exploration of Blockchain Technology to the British Government

British: Great Britain’s upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords, has recommended the exploration of the possible various applications of Blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT) across government services.

The House added that the government should study the possibility of using the technology in such sectors as national security and public safety, healthcare, cybersecurity and customs and immigration.

In its report, the Upper Chamber stressed that there are a lot of opportunities for DLT across government services. It also claimed that the adoption of Blockchain in the public sector could change the relationship between the government and its citizens through the technology’s decentralized trust mechanisms.

In his foreword to their report, lead author Lord Christopher Holmes claimed that the DLT can play a key role in improving government services and solidifying the country’s competitive position as a global leader in technology-based innovations.

Other highlights of the report

Aside from the possible benefits of the technology, the report cited the risks associated with its adoption because it is still new and “immature.” It presented as examples the risks related to the conduct of initial coin offerings (ICO), as well as the “unresolved issues” that could endanger the systems that will use it.

The house also claimed that “greater leadership” from the government is required to improve decision-making and the delivery of public services. It recommended that serious political will should be adopted to pursue initiatives in researching, developing standards, conducting tests, and enhancing cross-departmental collaboration with respect to DLT.

Previous parliamentary works on the technology

The British parliament has already worked on the technology in the past. In mid-2016, a House of Lords committee hosted a hearing on DLT and its possible effect(s) on finance and government.

Despite its acknowledgment of the potential of the technology, the committee adopted a somewhat critical tone on the technology then.

Source Cointelegraph

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Bitcoin News: $11,000 ‘Cripple Coin’: Roger Ver’s Bitcoin Criticism Finds Zero Support

Bitcoin.com owner and Bitcoin Cash proponent Roger Ver has called Bitcoin ‘cripple coin’ despite prices rising over $11,000.

In comments on the r/BTC subreddit celebrating 50,000 transactions on cryptocurrency gambling site SatoshiDice, Ver defied optimism about Bitcoin’s 1,500% annual growth.

“As cripple coin is passing $10,000 SatoshiDice is about to surpass 50,000 on chain transactions with Bitcoin Cash!” he announced.

Ver has become increasingly outspoken on Bitcoin’s flaws since Bitcoin Cash (BCH) came into being in August. Despite erratic price and mining behavior, the entrepreneur formerly known as ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ has publicly divested himself of large amounts of BTC holdings in favor of the alternative chain.

His latest Reddit post, however, was met with little support.

“Roger, you're gonna be writing a lot more apologies if you keep acting this way,” one top response reads Wednesday.

Specific criticism came from users alleging hypocrisy on Ver’s part, having previously complained Bitcoin Cash was not being referred to by its correct name in the press and industry.

“Roger you can’t complain and lose your temper over people calling BCH by the wrong name and then call BTC ‘cripple coin,’ the most popular response states.

“You’re just asking for it if you continue like that. BTC’s limitations speak for themselves; there’s no need for childish rhetoric.”

The wider Bitcoin community similarly picked up on the lack of popularity as Bitcoin actually breaks through $11,000.

The only efforts to support Ver’s view came in the form of somewhat bizarre account u/Nonce_00000000, which used the argument that he was infallible solely due to his status as a millionaire.

Source Cointelegraph

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Bitcoin Price: So Long, $10k: Bitcoin Price Unstoppable As $11,000 Becomes New Benchmark

Despite hitting $10,000 among major exchanges just hours ago, Bitcoin has already tackled $11,000 as markets show no signs of slowing.

The first hours of Wednesday saw $10,000 come and ago on Coinbase, Bitstamp, Bitfinex and others, with trading continuing to just below $10,700 before a correction.

That correction was short-lived, however, with Bitcoin then passing that mark to first hover around $10,750 and then continue to the next barrier soon afterwards.

Both Bitcoin’s rate of growth and comparative lack of volatility are unprecedented in its history.

Prices are up almost 1500% in 2017 alone, with expectations by even the more optimistic forecasters now seeming modest.

New bubble warnings in the mainstream press contrast with investment sources at a loss as to how high Bitcoin could go in 2018.

BTCC CEO Bobby Lee even took a randomized approach, basing his $48,000 prediction on the number of his Twitter followers.

Meanwhile, Tone Vays, the technical commentator who has seen his short-term tips come true with remarkable accuracy in recent months, said that $12,000 would now come “quickly” due to profit takers having completed their activity.

At the time, Bitcoin was still at $9900.

Source Cointelegraph

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Bitcoin News: TechCrunch Founder To Raise $100 Mln For Cryptocurrency Hedge Fund

Bitcoin News: Media company TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington has announced that he is raising $100 mln for a hedge fund called Arrington XRP Capital. The fund will be mainly involved in the buying and holding of cryptocurrency assets, as well as in investing in token sales and some equities and debt.

According to Arrington, his entry to the virtual currency market marks the next stage of his professional career and he thinks that he will be involved in the sector until his retirement.

"In the last several months, I've gone from crypto enthusiast to 100 percent crypto. I've only been looking at crypto deals. This is what I think I'll be doing the rest of my career."

Brief details of the fund

According to Arrington, the fund is the first of its kind that will compel all limited partners (LP) to invest in Ripple (XRP). The cryptocurrency is being used to power the RippleNet software of San Francisco-based startup Ripple. The token will also be utilized by Arrington XRP Capital for all distribution transactions, as well as fees.

Arrington further added that their use of Ripple’s XRP token will improve on the current digital currency hedge fund model by resolving some major issues seen in the present model. One issue is the practice by the hedge funds to take investments from fiat currencies with the purpose of investing in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum to support the launching of new virtual currencies.

"We think XRP is a particularly useful currency because of the transaction times. I think it makes a lot of sense to denominate a hedge fund in a cryptocurrency, the only downside is [potential] volatility against fiat."

Arrington’s partners in the fund are former TechCrunch Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Heather Harde, and two other unidentified individuals. Arrington and his partners have already raised $50 mln for the fund and are eyeing to conclude their fundraising before the end of 2017.

Source Cointelegraph

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