Bitcoin News

Bitcoin Money blog (@BitcoinMoney) gives a monthly wrapup on Bitcoin for the month of January, 2013. Excerpts:

“The closing price of $20.41 USD was up nearly seven dollars from the 2012 year-end close resulting in more than a 51% increase for the month — Bitcoin’s largest monthly gain since December 2011. The one-year gain, calculated from the January 2012 close of $5.48 is whopping 272%.”
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“The 111,100 bitcoins issued which Bitcoin miners took in during the month is valued at $1.72 million using the average daily valuation for the month of $15.49. Miners had been suffering ever since the block reward subsidy “halving” that occurred in November last year.”
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“A dollar’s worth of ASIC hardware performs hashing at the rate that is nearly two orders of magnitude over what a dollar’s worth of GPU hardware does so we are likely just a couple months (or less) away from seeing the end of any GPU mining that is profitable.”
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“Certainly greater demand occurring due to Bitcoin gaining traction as a payments and money transfer system is partly responsible for a higher valuation but there appeared to be no massive jump that would account for the need for an additional $75 million worth of the currency. Thus a significant portion of the rise can only be attributed to speculative interest.”
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“Most bitcoin market exchanges provide feeds with trading results in real-time and many volume records were broken in January.”
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“Early in January Bitcoin Foundation executive director Peter Vessenes published his Quarterly Update in which he describes an increasing level of interest from investors and shared his prediction that in 2013 there would be Bitcoin ‘liquidity problems’ (price increases).”
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“Bitcoin remains an experimental currency. As the software gets poked and prodded, new vulnerabilities are discovered. Some vulnerabilities will result in funds being lost.”
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“When a SatoshiDICE, BitInstant, CoinBase, or BitPay (all angel- and venture capital-backed Bitcoin-related startups) hits a home run, every person holding a bitcoin likely sees a rising valuation as a result due to increased demand for the currency from that Bitcoin startup’s success story.”
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“Without Wall Street’s participation there are few affordable methods to take a short position or to perform price hedging. Without this relief valve, wild volatility occurs as the market tries to discover Bitcoin’s price.”

 - http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/42429739154

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Vitalik Buterin, writer for Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine), describes today’s rally that has taken the Bitcoin BTC/USD exchange rate above its high water mark from 2012. Excerpts:

“Today’s maximum of $15.68 at the time of this writing [is] the highest that the Bitcoin price has been since July 6, 2011.”
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“The [network data] figures, which attempt to measure Bitcoin’s actual usage rather than public opinion or interest in the currency as search volume and all market statistics inevitably do, show the same pattern: the values rose during summer 2012, dropped off in the fall, but then began to quickly pick up again in November after WordPress started accepting the currency.”
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“The 14-day average is also now as high as it ever was, and may well go even higher.”

 - http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-price-breaks-15-4-august-2012-high

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Bitcoin Money blog (@BitcoinMoney) gives a monthly wrapup on Bitcoin for the month of July, 2012. Excerpts:

“The July BTC/USD closing price of $9.35 means a bitcoin cost two and a half dollars more than when 2Q2012 ended.”
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“For 2012, where the price opened at a $4.72 level, the price rise from January 1st now exceeds 98%.”
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“The 238,650 bitcoins issued which Bitcoin miners took in during the month is valued at $1.93 million using the average daily valuation for the month of $8.12. Along with the rising exchange rate, mining profitability has been rising as well.”
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“The trading volume at the exchanges with customers from Europe continued at a record pace in July.”
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“Once bitcoins are acquired, financial transactions no longer need to go through the banking system.This property has now been discovered by high yield investment program (HYIP) operators and the pace of participation only appears to be accelerating.”
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“Bitcoin.org lead developer, Gavin Andresen (@GavinAndresen), commented that HYIPs are ‘(almost?) always dressed-up Ponzi schemes’ and he makes a plea to participants to ‘please lick your wounds quietly when they implode’. Andresen showed prescience back at a time when bitcoins were selling for under a quarter dollar each when he remarked that ‘we are in the Wild West days of open-source currency. I expect people will get burned by scams, imitators, ponzi schemes and price bubbles.’

- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/28473024447

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Writer Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits) provides an update on Bitcoin now that it is trading at a level about 60% higher than it was when he last wrote on it (a little more than a month ago).  Excerpts from Ars Technica:

“What explains the newfound popularity of the cryptocurrency? We suspect the factors we identified in last month’s article—vices like pornography and gambling—continue to be a significant factor in the currency’s value.  But other new uses for the currency continue to pop up.”
“There has been a growing volume of transactions between Bitcoins and Linden Dollars, the official currency of Second Life.”

And, Timothy — who admits to once having been a Bitcoin skeptic, writes the disclaimer:

“Disclosure: The author owns some Bitcoins.” 

- http://bit.ly/PiJYN5

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Bitcoin Money blog (@BitcoinMoney) gives a monthly wrapup on Bitcoin for the month of June, 2012. Exerpts:

“For the month of June, 2012 the closing price of $6.69 was a dollar and a half above the previous month’s close giving a 28% gain for the month. The first quarter had closed at $4.90 so the closing price for 2Q2012 shows a gain of 36%. For 2012, where the price opened at a $4.72 level, the price rise from January 1st now exceeds 41%.”
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“Unlike previous rallies for Bitcoin, this one occurred without there being a major story or significant level of media attention.”
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“The Bitcoin exchanges offering BTC/EUR trading all saw record monthly trading volume levels and most of the other European currency markets such as the BTC/GBP (British sterling pound) and the BTC/PLN (Polish zloty) broke monthly volume records as well.”
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“The upcoming drop in the block reward (expected to occur in early December) is likely one reason [for the price rise]. When that event occurs, the rate of currency inflation will drop from the 25% per-year level to just 12.5%.”
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“The most significant conversion of funds out of bitcoin occurring today happens to be coming from those who are, ironically, enthusiastically showing their trust in Bitcoin’s future.”
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“Miners took in the 226,750 bitcoins that were issued (also referred to as being “mined”) during the month. Using the average daily valuation of $5.99 the value of these bitcoins issued totals a little over $1.35 million.”
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“A speculator unloading bitcoins generally has one option — to cash out at an exchange, whereas smaller investors and consumers holding bitcoins can cash out by spending their coins on goods and services.”

- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/26295113993

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Ars Technica writer Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits) checks in on Bitcoin on the one-year anniversary of the “Bitcoin Bubble”.  Excerpts:

“But since it hit bottom late last year, the cryptocurrency has defied skeptics (including me) who predicted it would prove to be a passing fad.”
“Mobile Bitcoin apps for Android are now available. Unfortunately, [Gavin Andresen] said, “iOS has been a struggle just because Apple for whatever reason has decided they don’t like Bitcoin handling on their platform.”
“Future Bitcoin clients will support multisignature transactions, in which a user’s private key is split up among multiple devices. With this feature enabled, compromising any single device won’t allow an attacker to spend the Bitcoins in a user’s wallet.”
“[Jerry Brito argues] that Bitcoin’s relative anonymity and the lack of intermediaries gives it a crucial advantage for ‘illicit stuff: drugs, gambling, pornography, getting money out of countries where there are restrictions on moving funds. That’s where it’ll establish itself first.’”
“Regulations that tried to ban ‘transmitting numbers that represent some value over the Internet’ could hit startups that offer gift card trading or mobile check cashing. ‘It’s a real challenge for regulators who are working with laws that were written for atoms, not bits,’ [Gavin Andresen] said.”
“Disclosures: The author [Timothy B. Lee] owns some Bitcoins.”

- http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/porn-gambling-and-malware-bitcoin-as-the-nets-wild-west

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After pointing out that the current market exchange rate for Bitcoin is above the level yet that it was at seven days ago, Bitcoin Money provides some commentary:

“Bitcoin’s transaction volume is very active — over 10,000 transactions per day most recently.  Those numbers show Bitcoin’s progress much more than what is said by the results of a price move when heavy selling is occurring.  Those desiring to buy bitcoins at these selloff levels weren’t (and still aren’t) able to do so due to the delay in moving funds into the exchanges.”

- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6427919531

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