First Long-Term LedgerX Bitcoin Option Pegs Price at $10,000

First Long-Term LedgerX Bitcoin Option Pegs Price at $10,000

First Long-Term LedgerX Bitcoin Option Pegs Price at $10,000

LedgerX just initiated its first long-term bitcoin futures option.

Called a Long-Term Equity Anticipation Security (LEAPS), the trade was matched by the platform this morning and is set to expire on December 28, 2018.

Under the terms of the deal, the buyer has the right to buy bitcoin at a price of $10,000 at that date, or almost a 30 percent premium on today's price.

Yet, because the buyer only makes money if the price is more than $10,000 (called the strike price), the investment can be seen as a reflection of the level of confidence that the price will reach that level by the agreed upon date.

Such long term futures options have long been seen in the industry as a much needed sign of maturity, and could in part help pave the way for even more institutional money to enter the space.

In an exclusive interview with CoinDesk, LedgerX CEO Paul Chou sought to position the milestone as just the first of many more before the cryptocurrency market can truly be considered mature.

Chou said:

"There will be, I expect, a lot more trades down the line. This is the first one, but it at least gives you the first guess from different institutional traders as to what bitcoin's dynamics will look like from now until 2018."

The trade option was listed by LedgerX late Friday night, and to Chou's surprise, two institutional investors agreed to the terms of the deal just one day later.

Under the terms, the buyer agreed to a price of $2,250.25 for the trade, meaning the seller collects that money if the price is less that $10,000 by the end of next year, and the buyer gets to purchase bitcoin at the strike price if it is higher.

Unlike a futures swap however, the buyer is not obliged to purchase the asset.

"If the price goes to zero, you don't have to pay $10,000 for it," Chou said. "But if a year from now it's at $20,000, then you can exercise your options."

Based on LedgerX's own calculations (made using the Nobel-prize winning Black-Sholes financial markets model), the startup believes there is a 25 percent chance that bitcoin will reach that level in the allotted time.

 

Soft launch

While this is the first LEAPS financial instrument matched by New York-based LedgerX, they've been conducting increasingly high trade volumes since their soft launch a month ago.

As reported by CoinDesk, LedgerX traded $1 million in bitcoin derivatives its first week of trading, ending Oct. 20.

Since then, the first cryptocurrency firm to be granted a derivatives clearing organization (DCO) license by the CFTC has posted a $1 million day, a $1.6 million day and on November 15, a record $2.6 million day.

Since LedgerX listed the LEAPS option at 5:30 Friday evening, Chou says they saw an additional $500,000 traded before midnight. "That's for a holiday week too," he said. "So we were shocked." He estimates the company has conducted approximately $16 million in notional bitcoin transactions to date.

While the startups numbers seem to indicated active early interest, legacy institutions such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME Group) and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) have both recently revealed their own similar plans.

Though Chou hopes to maintain his first-mover advantage, he said there's no hard date to launch into full operation. Rather, his team wants to make sure the platform scales well beyond the 1 million messages it sends per day before this milestone. He says he'd be "surprised if that takes "more than a month," concluding:

"But it might be sooner."

 

Author: Michael del Castillo Nov 18, 2017 at 21:59 UTC

 

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3 Reasons the Bitcoin Price Hit $8,000 Today

3 Reasons the Bitcoin Price Hit $8,000 Today

3 Reasons the Bitcoin Price Hit $8,000 Today

The bitcoin price touched the $8,000 mark on Friday morning (or Thursday night, depending on your time zone), enabling the flagship cryptocurrency to check another milestone off its to-do list before it reaches five-figure territory.
 

Bitcoin Price Touches $8,000

Just days prior, the bitcoin price had been trading below $6,000, but a mid-week rally raised bitcoin back to its pre-dip level and ultimately vaulted it to a new all-time high of $8,040 on cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.


BTC Price Chart | Source: BitcoinWisdom

At present, the bitcoin price is trading at a global average of $7,741, which translates into a $129.2 billion market cap.

 

3 Factors Behind Bitcoin’s Rally

While a multitude of factors contribute to the movement of the bitcoin price, three stand out as primary drivers of the present rally:
 

1. Wall Street’s Anticipated Entry Into the Markets

Ever since regulated U.S. derivatives exchange operator CME announced it would add bitcoin futures contracts to its product offering, analysts have been counting down the days until Wall Street makes its first major entry into the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Anecdotal evidence indicates that prominent institutional investors are eying the markets with interest — enough interest that Coinbase is launching a cryptocurrency custodial service specifically targeted at institutional investors with more than $10 million in crypto assets.

Related to this is the fact that Wall Street investors are increasingly bullish on publicly-traded companies that enter the bitcoin or blockchain space. Payment processor Square, for instance, received a significant bump to its share price after it rolled out a bitcoin pilot program to a limited number of users of its Square Cash app.

square-cash-bitcoin-price-nov17

2. Successful Lightning-Based Atomic Swap

Though less likely to make its way into the mainstream press, another factor influencing bitcoin’s rally is the successful completion of the first off-chain atomic swap. Accomplished using lightning network technology, developers at Lightning Labs traded testnet bitcoin for testnet litecoin trustlessly and without leaving a record of the transaction in either blockchain. Once the lightning network reaches mainnet implementation, this feature will enable the creation of decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.

 

3. SegWit2x

Finally, some analysts believe that the bitcoin price received a small bump due to the fact that a minority percentage of miners continued to signal for SegWit2x even though the fork’s most prominent advocates had called for its cancellation. Spencer Bogart, head of research at Blockchain Capital, had told Bloomberg Quint that he believed “some capital is rotating out of other crypto-assets and into bitcoin to make sure they receive coins on both sides of the fork” in the event that it did execute as planned. However, the fork did not occur — or at least has not yet — and fork-compatible nodes remain stuck at block 494782.

 

Author: Josiah Wilmoth on 17/11/2017

 

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Bitcoin Breaks Through $8,000 Following Massive Head Fake

Bitcoin Breaks Through $8,000 Following Massive Head Fake

Bitcoin Breaks Through $8,000 Following Massive Head Fake

Bitcoin just surmounted the $8,000 level, topping out at $8,020 on Bitfinex before retreating to $7,900 at press time. By now, reading about Bitcoin’s breach of its previous high might be getting repetitious, so strong has the currency’s bull run been. This time is an exception, though, because Bitcoin just pulled the mother of all head fakes.

Looking back

About a week ago, the SegWit2x hard fork was cancelled and the price immediately spiked from $7,200 to $7,800. But within the hour, the price had dropped and continued to fall further. Just a few days later, Bitcoin had sunk to a local low of $5,500, while rival Bitcoin Cash shot up from $600 to $2,600. At the time, a large number of Bitcoin miners had moved to Bitcoin Cash and the number of unconfirmed transactions soared to over 135,000. Fees increased commensurately.

Things didn’t look good. Bitcoin had just officially eschewed the only near-term solution to the scalability crisis. SegWit, which was adopted back in August, will take time to gain traction as wallet providers must include the feature and users must voluntarily begin using it. Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s long-term scaling plan, is still in testing and not ready for primetime yet. With the cancellation of 2MB blocks, it became obvious that there would be no quick fix to the currency’s scaling problem.
 

Waves of good news

However, Bitcoin Cash began rapidly dropping from its nearly vertical price ascent, miners came back to Bitcoin, and the transaction backlog subsided. Bitcoin’s price began to rise, and as good news arrived, the price moves became even larger.

What good news? Well, the British hedge fund Man Group, with over $100 bln in funds under management, announced they will begin trading Bitcoin once CME’s futures market is launched. Immediately following this, Payments app Square announced its full integration of Bitcoin into the payments platform. The company stated:

“We’re always listening to our customers and we’ve found that they are interested in using the Cash App to buy Bitcoin. We're exploring how Square can make this experience faster and easier, and have rolled out this feature to a small number of Cash App customers. We believe cryptocurrency can greatly impact the ability of individuals to participate in the global financial system and we're excited to learn more here.”

Square’s market capitalization swelled from $15 bln to $16 bln following the announcement, so Wall Street is apparently just as pleased as the Bitcoin community.

 

Coinbase Custody

Adding to the good news, Coinbase today announced Coinbase Custody, a Bitcoin storage service intended for hedge funds that might want to invest in the digital currency. Coinbase’s announcement states:

“Over 100 hedge funds have been created in the past year exclusively to trade digital currency. An even greater number of traditional institutional investors are starting to look at trading digital assets (including family offices, sovereign wealth funds, traditional hedge funds, and more). By some estimates there is $10B of institutional money waiting on the sidelines to invest in digital currency today. When we speak with these institutions, they tell us that the number one thing preventing them from getting started is the existence of a digital asset custodian that they can trust to store client funds securely.”

The announcement continues, describing the benefits of the service:

We are designing Coinbase Custody to meet the needs of institutional clients. In particular, we feel that institutional clients require:

  • Strict financial controls (multiple signers, audit trails, limits, etc)

  • Dedicated account representatives and phone support

  • SLAs on funds transfers

  • A regulated digital currency custodian

  • Multi-user accounts with separate permissions

  • Support for a wide range of digital assets and currencies

  • Insurance (in some cases)

  • And high levels of cyber and physical security

  • The new service is expected to launch in 2018.

Expect sharp moves

Bitcoin’s technical analysts, who look at chart patterns to try and predict price moves, suggest that the currency is about to experience a significant price move. Because of its rapid climb, analysis would seem to indicate that the price should experience a pullback here to regroup and consolidate before pushing higher. However, around $8,000 is the top of the trading channel that Bitcoin has been in for months, and if the price can resoundingly break through this barrier, it could go parabolic.
 

In a sense, Bitcoin’s value is even higher than it would appear, at least for those who owned Bitcoin before the August 1 fork and who held the resulting Bitcoin Cash they received. User csasker on the /r/BitcoinMarkets subreddit wrote:
 

BTG + BCH + BTC now over 9000! :D:DDD

 

Author: David Dinkins

 

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Morgan Stanley chief says bitcoin ‘doesn’t quite deserve the attention it’s getting’

Morgan Stanley chief says bitcoin 'doesn't quite deserve the attention it's getting'

Morgan Stanley chief says bitcoin 'doesn't quite deserve the attention it's getting'

  • Morgan Stanley Chairman and CEO James Gorman said bitcoin is getting more attention than it might deserve

  • He said the cryptocurrency is the "definition" of a speculative investment, and anyone thinking it might be stable is "deluding themselves"

  • But Gorman acknowledged that bitcoin's growing acceptance and usability meant it was not going away overnight

Bitcoin is getting more attention than it deserves, but the phenomenon is not going away overnight, according to Morgan Stanley Chairman and CEO James Gorman.

Speaking with CNBC on Thursday, Gorman said bitcoin isn't even close to a safe investment, and would-be cryptocurrency owners shouldn't expect otherwise.

"Something that goes up 700 percent in a year — it's by definition speculative," he said. "So anybody who thinks they're buying something that it's a stable investment is deluding themselves."

"It might go up another 700 percent, but it could easily not," Gorman added.

Gorman's stance on bitcoin appeared slightly less negative than some of his peers on Wall Street. For example, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon predicted if "you're stupid enough to buy [bitcoin], you'll pay the price for it one day." Meanwhile, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink called the cryptocurrency "an index of money laundering."

The criticism from financial luminaries has done little to deter bitcoin's ascent. On Thursday morning, the cryptocurrency traded at $7,141.03, according to Coindesk data. It had begun the year at only about $1,000 per token.

Gorman added that bitcoin is "punching above its weight" and the cryptocurrency "doesn't quite deserve the attention it's getting."

Previously, the Morgan Stanley CEO described cryptocurrencies as "more than just a fad."

He explained to CNBC that bitcoin's growing acceptance and usability meant it was "not going away overnight."

But there are issues and uncertainties surrounding the cryptocurrency.

"Is it a needed new form of stored value? I'm not so sure," he said, adding it was also unclear if the regulators and central banks would watch bitcoin's growth from afar or become involved.

Still, the bank chief grappled with digital money's reputation for facilitating criminality: "Does it support people who want to use currencies on anonymous basis for wrong purposes? Absolutely," Gorman said.

Proponents of bitcoin predict the cryptocurrency will continue breaking records amid its growing acceptance among users to carry out financial transactions. One analyst even predicted bitcoin could top Apple's market cap in five years.

 

Author Saheli Roy Choudhury
Reporter, CNBC.com

 

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Won’t Let Bitcoin Go to Zero – CME Chief Quells Fears Ahead of December Bitcoin Futures Launch

Won't Let Bitcoin Go to Zero - CME Chief Quells Fears Ahead of December Bitcoin Futures Launch

Won’t Let Bitcoin Go to Zero – CME Chief Quells Fears Ahead of December Bitcoin Futures Launch

Bitcoin futures contracts are scheduled to launch in one month on the world’s largest derivatives exchange, and market analysts have nothing to fear.

That’s according to Terry Duffy, chairman and CEO of the Chicago-based CME Group, which will soon become the first licensed U.S. derivatives exchange to list bitcoin futures contracts. Speaking with CNBC, Duffy revealed that CME plans to launch bitcoin futures trading during the second week of December.

Previously, the exchange operator had provided a vaguer timeline, stating that it hoped to list them during the fourth quarter, pending regulatory approval, so many analysts doubted they would actually launch before the end of the year. But their impending launch makes some industry insider nervous.

“For the first time, I am extremely scared,” Barron’s quotes Thomas Peterffy, head of derivatives trading firm Interactive Brokers Group, as saying. He says that he fears bitcoin’s volatility will make smaller firms more likely to fail to cover their margins, which could be as low as 2% on futures products. If bitcoin products are not isolated from the rest of the market, he says that that the failure of these small firms could reverberate throughout the exchange and render it less protected against risk.

However, Duffy downplayed these concerns and assured skeptics that CME will implement restrictions designed to contain the inherent volatility of the bitcoin markets.

“I’m not going to let it go to zero,” he said, adding that if the exchange has rules in place to handle liquidation-only events. He further explained that CME has “velocity logic functionality” tools — colloquially known as market “bumpers” — that enable the exchange operator to press pause on trading during periods of intense, precipitous volatility. These bumpers might pause bitcoin trading for as long as an hour, and the market will also have intraday limits to prevent the price from fluctuating too wildly within a single day of trading.

“I should not be trying to predict the price of products. I’m here to manage the risks of products,” he concluded.

 

Author: Josiah Wilmoth on 14/11/2017

 

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Bitcoin Cash Hard Forks In Bid to Ease Mining Difficulties

Bitcoin Cash Hard Forks In Bid to Ease Mining Difficulties

Bitcoin Cash Hard Forks In Bid to Ease Mining Difficulties

Bitcoin cash appears to be successfully navigating a planned hard fork.

At press time, the majority of the network nodes (roughly 82 percent) have transitioned to new software (version 0.16.0 or later) that includes rules aimed at making the protocol's reward distribution more attractive to the miners that secure its blockchain.

Executed at roughly 21:00 UTC, the new version of the bitcoin cash blockchain has since amassed six blocks, while none have yet been mined on the older network. The results suggest that, while still possible, the fork will pass without the creation of a competing cryptocurrency.

As reported by CoinDesk, today's hard fork looks to switch the protocol to a different mining algorithm that will favorably adjust how hard it is for miners to create new blocks roughly every 600 seconds.

The idea is that by doing so, bitcoin cash will avoid the sudden changes in difficulty that have encouraged large numbers of miners to switch frequently between the bitcoin and bitcoin cash blockchains, migrating to whatever version is offering the most in terms of rewards.

Kept intact will be the rules that caused the creation of the cryptocurrency, which hard forked off of the main bitcoin blockchain in August by way of code that increased its block size to 8 MB, up from 1 MB on bitcoin.
 

Smooth upgrade

But it's the necessity of the mining change that has many thinking the upgrade will be smooth.

In remarks, Haipo Yang and Jiang Zhuoer, two major mining pool operators, said they didn't expect the change to be contentious. Other users, speaking in WeChat channels dedicated to the cryptocurrency, voiced similar statements of support for the measure.

This is due in part to the mining algorithm, which they acknowledged as having produced wild fluctuations in hash rate in the past. Developers have largely agreed.

According to the blog post outlining the hard fork and the updated software, the current rule is "problematic because it prevents consistently fast confirmations for users, and radically shifts the coin issuance schedule."

In this way, Juan Garavaglia, a developer working to coordinate the fork sought to label it as successful, indicating his optimism that the majority of the bitcoin cash network will update.

"For [the] fork… economically relevant and miners [nodes] are the critical ones," he said.

Already, startups including Yours and Ledger have migrated software.

 

Cash and carry

Should the software upgrade ultimately hold, it could bode well for bitcoin cash.

The protocol's supporters are arguably more encouraged about the network's future with the suspension of the Segwit2x hard fork, scheduled to occur on bitcoin last week. A controversial scaling proposal drafted by a group of miners and bitcoin businesses, Segwit2x looked to increase the bitcoin block size from 1 MB to 2 MB by way of a hard fork.

Still, with the measure failed, its supporters appear to be migrating to alternatives. This weekend saw bitcoin cash rise to a value of nearly $2,000, an all-time high, though analysts differed on whether this amounts to lasting (or even real) support for the network.

At the same time, money talks, and already at least one smaller miner indicated they're following the situation, possibly hinting at the psychological factors at play in the market.

Yimo Cheng, a China-based tax accountant who mines bitcoin out of his home, said he hasn't yet started mining bitcoin cash for concerns about its ownership being concentrated among Chinese buyers.

And while he believes bitcoin is "more international," he ultimately said he would continue to monitor how the dynamic between the two blockchains developers.

He resolved:

"I will obverse it for a while."

Bailey Reutzel contributed reporting.

 

Author: Pete Rizzo Nov 13, 2017 at 22:30 UTC

 

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Bitcoin Plunges 29% From Record High

Bitcoin Plunges 29% From Record High

Bitcoin Plunges 29% From Record High

  • Offshoot called bitcoin cash is luring users amid tech debate
  • Bitcoin’s jump this year has attracted Wall Street’s interest


Citigroup Inc. CEO Michael Corbat shares his thoughts on digital currencies.

Bitcoin plunged as the cancellation of a technology upgrade prompted some users to switch out of the cryptocurrency, spooking speculators who had profited from a more than 800 percent surge this year.

The cryptocurrency has dropped 9.5 percent since late Friday, extending its slide from last week’s record to as much as 29 percent, according to data compiled by Coinmarketcap.com and Bloomberg. Bitcoin cash, a rival that split from the original bitcoin in August, has jumped nearly 40 percent since Friday.

Bitcoin Plunges 29% From Record High2

Bitcoin cash is gaining popularity because of its larger block size, a characteristic that makes transactions cheaper and faster than the original. When a faction of the cryptocurrency community canceled plans to increase bitcoin’s block size on Wednesday — a move that would have created another offshoot — some supporters of bigger blocks rallied around bitcoin cash.

The resulting volatility has been extreme even by bitcoin’s wild standards and comes amid growing interest in cryptocurrencies among regulators, banks and fund managers. While skeptics have called bitcoin’s rapid advance a bubble, it has become too big for many on Wall Street to ignore. Even after shrinking by as much as $38 billion since Wednesday, bitcoin boasts a market value of $101 billion.

Supporters of bitcoin’s technology upgrade “are now switching support to bitcoin cash,” said Mike Kayamori, head of Tokyo-based Quoine, the world’s second most-active bitcoin exchange over the past day. “There’s a panic about what’s happening. People shouldn’t panic. Just hold on to both coins until we see how it plays out.”

Bitcoin’s slump dragged down shares of cryptocurrency-related companies, including Hong Kong-based PC Partner Group Ltd., maker of graphics cards that can be used in the mining of digital coins. But there were few signs of wider ripple effects. Asian stocks were mixed as investors awaited continuing talks on tax legislation in the U.S. this week.

The cancellation of last week’s bitcoin upgrade has left users to choose between the two versions of the cryptocurrency. On one side is the original bitcoin, powered by so-called SegWit technology, which aims to improve its performance by moving unessential data off of its underlying blockchain. On the other side is bitcoin cash, which allows its blockchain to handle eight times as much data as the original.

Proponents of bitcoin cash believe their approach is simpler and closer to the original goal of bitcoin, which was described primarily as a payment system in its white paper. Supporters of the original bitcoin say that vision is too limited, and that by improving the blockchain with SegWit technology, bitcoin can become a new digital asset class that not only supports payments but countless other functions.

While bitcoin cash has been around for months, it saw limited support as the community awaited last week’s technology upgrade for the original bitcoin, which promised similar features. Now that the upgrade has been called off, businesses that use the cryptocurrency primarily as a payment method are expected to increase adoption of bitcoin cash.

While bitcoin cash surged over the weekend, it hasn’t been a straight line up. The cryptocurrency was trading at $1,325 at 11:53 a.m. in Hong Kong, down from a high of about $2,478 on Sunday, Coinmarketcap.com prices show.

Bitcoin has been similarly volatile; it initially rose after news that it would avoid another split, but the gains were short-lived. It’s now trading at $5,948 after touching a record $7,882 on Wednesday.

“Crypto trading is not for the novice investor,” said John Spallanzani, chief macro strategist at GFI Securities LLC in New York.
 

Authors: Justina Lee and Yuji Nakamura
13 November 2017, 02:05 GMT Updated on 13 November 2017, 04:28 GMT

 

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Bitcoin Gold Launches Today

Bitcoin Gold Launches Today

Bitcoin Gold Launches Today

After weeks of preparation, Bitcoin Gold (Bgold; BTG) is finally launching today, November 12, 2017.
 

Bitcoin Gold is the second project to fork away from the Bitcoin blockchain to create a new coin this year; on August 1, Bitcoin Cash (Bcash) was the first. Where Bcash attempted to offer an on-chain scaling solution by increasing Bitcoin’s block size limit (while removing the Segregated Witness code), Bgold is an attempt to counter Bitcoin’s mining centralization.
 

The most important difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Gold is a new proof-of-work mining algorithm. Instead of SHA256, the new coin uses the memory-hard Equihash proof-of-work function that’s also used in the privacy-focused altcoin Zcash. This means that specialized ASIC hardware that has come to dominate Bitcoin’s mining ecosystem will not be able to mine Bgold.
 

Although Bgold is launching this weekend, the fork “officially” occurred on October 25. Anyone who held bitcoin (BTC) on that day (specifically, when Bitcoin block 491406 was mined) will have an equivalent amount of BTG attributed to their private keys. These private keys can be imported into a dedicated Bgold wallet, which, starting tomorrow, will allow users to spend the coins. (But note that this does not come without risks and tradeoffs: If you’re not sure what you’re doing, it’s best to ignore BTG until you do. For more information also see this article.)
 

Block 491407 on the Bgold blockchain will be the first block to deviate from the Bitcoin protocol. In other words, this will be the first block where Bgold splits off to become its own currency. However, somewhat controversially, the first 8000 blocks will be privately mined by the Bgold team. Only after these 8000 blocks will Bgold’s mining difficulty ramp up to normal levels, and will anyone be allowed to mine the coin. The resulting 100,000 BTG worth of block rewards will pay for project development and more. (For more details, see the Bitcoin Gold roadmap.)

 

Other changes implemented by Bitcoin Gold are mostly to ensure a smooth split away from Bitcoin. This includes a new difficulty re-adjustment algorithm named “DigiShield” that adjusts the mining difficulty each time a block is found — instead of once every two weeks. Bgold also includes strong replay protection, ensuring that no users spend BTC when they mean to spend BTG, and vice versa. Additionally, BGold implemented a new address scheme, preventing users from spending BTC to BTG addresses and vice versa.

 

Bitcoin Gold will be supported by a relatively large number of exchanges, including major players like Bitfinex, OKex and HitBTC. Several of these exchanges are effectively supporting BTC/BTG trading already through futures markets. Ignoring an initially inflated price, these futures have traded at around 0.02 BTC in recent weeks, with a notable surge to about 0.042 BTC over the past few days. If this holds up, 1 BTG would be worth almost $250, and Bgold would immediately become a top-5 altcoin on websites like coinmarketcap.com.
 

For more information on Bitcoin Gold, see Bitcoin Magazine’s earlier article on this project.

Author: Aaron van Wirdum

 

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Bitcoin price – Cryptocurrency plummets $1000 ahead of bitcoin gold split

Bitcoin price - Cryptocurrency plummets $1000 ahead of bitcoin gold split

Bitcoin price – Cryptocurrency plummets $1000 ahead of bitcoin gold split

BITCOIN prices took a blow today, falling below £5,328.46 ($7,000) just days before a planned software update will release bitcoin gold.

Bictoin prices fell by £761.21 ($1,000) in just over 48 hours after strong performance at the start of the week.

The crypto token opened today at £5,440.19 ($7,146.78), according to CoinDesk, before peaking at £5,579.71 ($7,330.06).

On Wednesday, the popular digital currency flared to an unprecedented price of more than £5,937.43 ($7,800) in the wake of the cancelled Segwit2x update.

The plummeting price comes on top of a hard fork that took place a few weeks ago, and will now come into effect with a new token known as bitcoin gold (BTG).

BTG aims to keep most properties of the bitcoin protocol, but will disallow the use of specialised chipsets in the mining process.

Bitcoin gold is now scheduled to arrive at 7pm GMT on Sunday November 12 – not November 1, as it was originally planned.

The token's backers said in a statement: "We are extremely grateful for the community around the world who have been contributing hash power to our testnets; besides patiently testing their own mining process, they allow exchanges, pools, wallet developers, and all other service operators to implement and test their support of BTG so that the bitcoin gold community can have a full suite of services at launch time."

In a similar split to bitcoin cash earlier in August, all current users of the cryptocurrency will be credited with a number of BTG tokens equal to their bitcoin stash.

bitcoin-price-news-bitcoin-gold-hard-fork-split-btc-value-1125459
Bitcoin price: The crypto token plummeted after a week of strong performance

In the few months that is has been alive, bitcoin cash has already managed to amount a market cap volume of £10,546,618,870.19 ($13,855,093,020).

But the creators of bitcoin gold have faced criticism, mostly for choosing to withhold one per cent of the currency's volume.

Unlike bitcoin, the new token was created in advance of being open-sourced to the public.

BTG's creators have argued that this move simply aims to pay the development team for their work.

Users will be able to redeem their coins after the cryptocurrency is launched.

Some have also criticised the need for a bitcoin derivative in market already over-saturated by crypto tokens.

 

Sol Lederer, blockchain director at Loomia, said in an statement: "These forks are very bad for bitcoin.

"Saturating the market with different versions of bitcoin is confusing to users, and discredits the claim that there are a limited number of bitcoins — since you can always fork it and double the supply."

There are currently more than 1,200 different tokens in existence according to CoinMarketCap. Most of them do not even reach a tenth of a dollar in price.
 

Author: SEBASTIAN KETTLEY
PUBLISHED: 18:03, Fri, Nov 10, 2017 | UPDATED: 18:13, Fri, Nov 10, 2017

 

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Bitcoin Gold Sets Sunday Date for Cryptocurrency Release

Bitcoin Gold Sets Sunday Date for Cryptocurrency Release

Bitcoin Gold Sets Sunday Date for Cryptocurrency Release

Bitcoin gold is set to go live this weekend.

In a new blog post, the developers behind the fork of the bitcoin blockchain said that they would release a formal software client for download at 7:00 PM UTC on Nov. 12. Originally set for a public launch on Nov. 1, the project is backed by LightningASIC, a seller of mining hardware based in Hong Kong, as well as a community of relatively unknown developers.

As reported by CoinDesk, the idea behind bitcoin gold is to keep most properties of the protocol, but restrict the use of specialized chips for mining, or the process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain (while also creating new tokens as a reward).

It's also the latest example of a "airdropped" cryptocurrency that will distribute new coins to anyone who owned bitcoin at the time of the split, or up until the date the ledger of transactions started to differ.

Yet in a move criticized by some observers, the team behind bitcoin gold has been mining blocks in insolation since the new network was formally created last month, with a certain amount of coins being set aside to support development.

In comments, the team behind the effort sought to send a signal of confidence to the market, perhaps owing to concerns circulating around the effort.

"We are extremely grateful for the community around the world who have been contributing hash power to our testnets; besides patiently testing their own mining process, they allow exchanges, pools, wallet developers, and all other service operators to implement and test their support of BTG so that the bitcoin gold community can have a full suite of services at launch time," the project's backers said in a statement.

In the days ahead, exchanges will no doubt be watching the launch. Soon after its August release, bitcoin cash, another cryptocurrency that forked the bitcoin network, amassed a nearly $4 billion market value.

Exchanges and traders will no doubt be watching to see if history repeats.

Author: Stan Higgins Nov 9, 2017 at 19:35 UTC

 

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