Welcome to the Crowdify digest of interesting and important news and views about Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency.
Five Big Reasons Why People Are Still Skeptical About Bitcoin
Bitcoin’s astronomical rally has cryptocurrency bulls feeling vindicated. Not so fast, skeptics say.
The digital currency’s more than 100 percent surge in the past two months looks eerily familiar, argue the bears, pointing to November 2013, when the price quintupled in short order to top $1,000 for the first time. By Valentine’s Day it was worth around half that, and spent the better part of the next two years languishing below $500.
Then it absolutely exploded -- jumping more than $1,400 in two months. At its height last week, one bitcoin could buy about two ounces of gold. Its champions touted the arrival of blockchain into the mainstream, the coin’s underlying technology which they say can lift the poor out of poverty and make transactions more secure, inexpensive and efficient.
But signs of a top have emerged, detractors warn. On May 25, bitcoin surged more than $300 to a record only to turn tail and close little changed. The $600 round trip was the biggest daily swing in its history. It then slumped 8 percent the next day. Bitcoin was down 1.5 percent to $2,255.50 as of 12:35 p.m. in New York. For bears, that kind of volatility shows the asset’s unreliability as a store of value.
Full story at https://bloom.bg/2sczmai
Bitcoin is outperforming major assets but hedge funds are still staying away from the cryptocurrency
Bitcoin hit an all-time high last week, marking a year-to-date rally of 180 percent and potentially stellar returns for those who bet on the cryptocurrency, but it appears hedge funds are still not ready to touch the asset class.
The lighter supervision and more sophisticated client base enjoyed by hedge funds, as well as their ongoing search for market-beating alternative sources of return, provide just some reasons why such vehicles would be expected to venture more boldly into the booming but narrowly understood market for cryptocurrencies.
Indeed, bitcoin's rally has far outpaced the S&P 500 index, which is up 7.9 percent year-to-date, and the NASDAQ which has seen around a 15 percent rise. In the currency space, the euro has risen nearly 6 percent year-to-date against the dollar, while sterling is up around 4.2 percent. The euro and pound are the best performing major currencies so far this year.
Yet aside from dedicated vehicles set up with a sole or majority focus on trading cryptocurrencies, many hedge funds are still very reluctant to dip a toe into the asset class.
Full story at http://cnb.cx/2scKGn1
Bitcoin Exchange Woes See Almost $50 Mln Pass Through LocalBitcoins
LocalBitcoins set a new all-time trading high of $45.7 mln last week as Bitcoin almost hit $3,000.
Data compiled by Coin Dance confirms the week ending May 27 was the P2P marketplace’s busiest ever with $45,710,741 changing hands.
Unlike previous records, the latest high was the result of a broad trend across all LocalBitcoins markets as traders rushed to cash in on Bitcoin’s steep climb.
While not yet shown by the statistics, trading likely tailed off equally as steeply through Saturday as prices corrected below $2,000.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2scmPUr
A New Bitcoin Improvement Proposal Aims to Compromise
It is still hard to envision that everyone in the bitcoin community will be pleased with a compromise. There are still some bitcoin proponents who vehemently oppose Segwit, and then there are those who fully disagree with a 2MB hardfork. On May 29 a developer named Calvin Rechner submitted a new bitcoin improvement proposal (BIP) that aims to cohere to the recent Barry Silbert scaling concept.
“This proposal is written under the assumption that the signatories to the Consensus 2017 Scaling Agreement are genuinely committed to the terms of the agreement, and intend to enact the updates described therein,” Rechner’s BIP details.
"This document describes a virtuous combination of James Hilliard’s ‘Reduced signalling threshold activation of existing segwit deployment’, Shaolin Fry’s ‘Mandatory activation of segwit deployment’, Sergio Demian Lerner’s ‘Segwit2Mb’ proposal, Luke Jr’s ‘Post-segwit 2 MB block size hardfork’, and hard fork safety mechanisms from Johnson Lau’s ‘Spoonnet’ into a single omnibus proposal and patchset."
Full story at http://bit.ly/2scFIXi
Bitcoin SegWit Activation August 1: New Bitcoin Improvement Protocol
A new Bitcoin improvement protocol (BIP) has surfaced from the Core mailing list which includes Barry Silbert’s scaling solution.
The yet unnumbered BIP proposes a user-activated soft fork (UASF) August 1, as was included in BIP148, with a two-megabyte hard fork locking in six months later.
“This proposal is written under the assumption that the signatories to the Consensus 2017 Scaling Agreement[1] are genuinely committed to the terms of the agreement and intend to enact the updates described therein,” the introduction to the mailing reads.
Silbert’s proposal for ending the scaling deadlock had faced mounting criticism due to the closed nature of the discussions and its nature as a “compromise” rather than a full-fledged solution.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2scLU1C
Bitcoin Is Bigger Than Ever, And Here's Why That Matters
The money you've been using all your life is backed by a government of some sort, and it exists in a tangible way. Bitcoin is neither tangible nor backed by anyone, but it's still worth a great deal to some people. This digital currency began circulating on the internet in 2009 with each Bitcoin worth just a tiny bit of "real" money, but right now a single Bitcoin is worth more than $2,000. Bitcoin is fascinating from a technological standpoint, but it's also fueling online crime and violence because of the anonymity it offers. Here's how Bitcoin works and why you should care.
Bitcoin is what's known as a cryptocurrency, a digital asset that exists only as data. You probably have money in the bank that is digital, but those digits equal physical currency. Not so with Bitcoin. Bitcoin also has no centralized regulation nor innate legal framework. As such, the value of Bitcoin is dictated entirely by the market, and the market is hot right now.
Bitcoin is stored in a digital wallet, which you can save locally on a hard drive or phone, or online with any number of Bitcoin exchanges. Saving your Bitcoins locally is like keeping all your money under the mattress. If something happens to the digital wallet, all your money is toast. Sending and receiving money is handled by pointing your Bitcoin client or web exchange toward a Bitcoin address, which every wallet has. A few minutes later, the Bitcoin will leave your wallet and show up in another. Websites that accept Bitcoin are rare, but they are out there. Spending it in real life is considerably more tricky, but again, there are a few system in place to manage it.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2scFpM4
Japan’s Bitpoint to Add Bitcoin Payments to 100,000+ Stores
Peach Aviation Ltd announced last week that it will be the first Japanese airline to accept bitcoin for tickets. Peach is Japan’s first Low-Cost Carrier (LCC) and is majority owned by the country’s largest airline, All Nippon Airways Co. Ltd (ANA).
To accept bitcoin, the low-cost airline has partnered with Bitpoint Japan Co, a bitcoin exchange and payments startup founded on March 3, 2016. In addition to allowing Peach to accept bitcoin for flight tickets, the companies are working together to add bitcoin Japan's Bitpoint to Add Bitcoin Payments to 100,000+ Storespayment options to souvenir shops, restaurants, and hotels at travel destinations. Furthermore, “we will jointly install bitcoin ATMs where customers can withdraw cash from bitcoin,” their partnership agreement reveals.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Bitpoint is “planning to give hundreds of thousands of Japanese retail outlets the ability to accept the digital currency.” The company’s president, Genki Oda, said, “We’re holding discussions with a retail-related company,” adding that:
"We’re also talking to a big convenience store operator about using it [bitcoin] … By going through a company providing payment terminal services to shops, we have the possibility of increasing its use at one stroke. It’s easier than talking to lots of individual retailers."
Full story at http://bit.ly/2scmwJj
Cryptocurrency Trading Volume Hits $4.3 Bln, Nears Stock Exchange Volume
On May 25, the cryptocurrency trading volume hit $4.3 bln. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin and NEM drove the cryptocurrency trading volume to new all-time highs.
Bitcoin developer and entrepreneur Jimmy Song compared the cryptocurrency trading volume to the exchange volume of major stock exchanges such as NASDAQ. Although the cryptocurrency market’s trading volume is only a fraction of major stock exchanges such as NASDAQ, it is nearing the exchange volume of smaller stock exchanges such as Thailand and Australian stock exchanges.
In order for the cryptocurrency market to near the trading volumes of major stock exchanges, particularly the 16 stock exchanges in the $1 Trillion Dollar Club, the cryptocurrency market will need to achieve a multi-trillion dollar market cap. Currently, the market cap of the cryptocurrency market is $71 bln.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2rynK4q
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