C4 Launches World’s First Bitcoin Certification Program

Bitcoin Think Tank Coin Center Launches with Star-Studded Support

Coin Center, a new public policy organisation dedicated to digital currency research and advocacy, has launched with widespread backing from the bitcoin industry.

The Washington, DC-based group is supported by prominent figures such as VC investor Marc Andreessen, SecondMarket chairman Barry Silbert, bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik and a host of the industry’s most prominent companies.

In an open letter to the community, executive director Jerry Brito said that one major goal of the group is to help shape the global regulatory debate that could decide the fate of digital currency usage in the US and abroad.

Brito, a former executive director and research fellow at noted market research organisation Mercatus Center, wrote:

“Digital currencies like Bitcoin will be an important part of our economy, and policymakers are now beginning to consider how to regulate their use. As a result, there is a need for an organization that can be a trusted and credible source of information about the regulatory implications of digital currencies. We seek to be that trusted and credible source.”

Notably, Brito recently co-authored a critique of the BitLicense that was published by Mercatus. He formally left the organisation on 18th August, cryptically announcing by email that we would be moving on to another venture.

Star-studded support

In addition to Brito, Andreessen and Garzik, the group’s board of directors includes angel investor Alex Morcos; Stanford professor and Ripple Labs advisor Susan Athey; and Andreessen Horowitz general partner Balaji Srinivasan.

Coin Center will have an initial budget of $1m to support its efforts.

The organisation received funding from a variety of well-known bitcoin investors, companies and venture groups including:

• Andreessen Horowitz
• BitGo
• BitPay
• Coinbase
• Hudson River Trading
• itBit’s Charles Cascarilla
• Liberty City Ventures’ Emil Woods
• RRE Ventures
• Union Square Ventures
• Xapo.

Move toward advocacy

The group’s emergence comes at a critical juncture for digital currency adoption as regulators and governments worldwide debate if and how the technology should be regulated.

Further, it joins other organisations also focused on bitcoin public policy, including fellow Washington DC-based Chamber of Digital Commerce, led by former Forbes correspondent Perianne Boring, and the industry’s oldest support group, the Bitcoin Foundation.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Jeff Garzik explained that there is demand for more information about bitcoin, both on the policy front and beyond, and that as a result, new groups are being formed to fill this need.

Given the fact that regulators are still working out how they plan on defining digital currencies, he said that “new policy research and study is needed”.

“The time was really right for this effort,” he argued.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Optimism Grows as Isle of Man Bitcoin Conference Draws to Close

The big news from Crypto Valley Summit’s closing day was that the Isle of Man is currently considering whether to allow residents the ability to pay their government bills, including income and other taxes, with bitcoin.

The announcement was made during the event’s closing speech by Chris Corlett, chief executive of the government’s Department of Economic Development, which is in charge of setting policy on economic and jobs growth on the island.

Corlett said:

“We are considering what services we can deploy to allow these emerging payment types as part of our portfolio. We are seeking payment methods that provide the lowest cost and greatest convenience to citizens and businesses.”

The Isle of Man government is formally accepting ‘expressions of interest’ from payments providers who can supply digital currency or card payments systems to the government.

These systems would be available to businesses and citizens to pay for bills ranging from road tax to income tax, Corlett told CoinDesk.

Seaside success story

Corlett prefaced the announcement with a recounting of the island’s economic growth over the last three decades.

Describing the island as a “fading Victorian seaside resort” when he was growing up, Corlett noted that 30 years ago, the Isle of Man’s per capita GDP was about half the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average.

Today, he said, it is more than double that measure.

The island’s growth has been helped in recent years by the number of online gambling companies who base their operations there. The world’s largest online poker firm, Poker Stars, for example, had only four staff when it started on the island, but employs nearly 300 people today, Corlett said.

“We can now pat ourselves on the back for our successful e-gaming sector, but there were plenty of mistakes in the early days [...] But you have to take risks, we have tried to innovate responsibly, but we do need to protect our consumers and protect our reputation,” he said.

The Bitcoin Foundation’s Brock Pierce interviewed at Crypto Valley Summit

Corlett underlined the importance of the ˝e-business˝ sector, which includes digital currency companies, in the projected growth of the island’s economy.

“It’s front and centre for us as an economy and as a government. We need to create the right environment for e-business to thrive,” he said.

Currency and beyond

Corlett’s talk followed presentations by Bruce Fenton of the non-profit group Bitcoin Association and David Johnston of the Decentralised Applications Fund.

Fenton discussed the technological impact cryptocurrency will have, even if bitcoin as a currency doesn’t take off, saying:

“Some die-hard people in the bitcoin space think it’s going to wipe out banks or governments or something like that. But, it doesn’t have to come anything near that. The technology is here to stay.”

Johnston, however, explored the potential of applications built on top of the block chain, emphasising the myriad ways in which decentralisation could create value for users.

“We now have lower level protocols, but it’s starting to evolve into higher level applications that we can build on. We will see an explosion of decentralised applications,” he said.

Business showcase

Before the talks, conference delegates could have face-to-face sessions with a variety of professional services providers based on the Isle of Man.

These included global consulting and accountancy firms like KPMG, a major sponsor of the conference, and local firms like Boston Trust, which provides consulting services to firms, especially in the online gambling sector.

Some local startups also set up booths in the courtyard of the Sefton Hotel, where the conference was located on its second day.

One of them was TGBEX, which makes physical bitcoins out of a variety of metals, including gold and silver. The firm was launching its products, hoping to start marketing in time for the Christmas gifting season, said co-founder Richard Owusu-Awuah.

Each coin is engraved with a map of the world, with a private key hidden behind a holographic sticker on the back. The public key is printed on the sticker.

Movie star entrepreneur

Delegates rolled into the conference following a dinner the previous night that featured a speech from GoCoin co-founder and active angel investor Brock Pierce.

Pierce took the podium in the restaurant of the Claremont Hotel after a trailer of the 1996 movie First Kid was played. The movie starred Sinbad as a bodyguard of the US president’s son, played by Pierce.

“I don’t think I’ve seen any of my movies since I was 15 or 16 [years old], probably because I didn’t want to be reminded of how bad I was,” Pierce said of his early career as a child actor.

“Talking about this can make me blush,” he added.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

OKCoin Introduces Multiple Balances for Trading Flexibility

OKCoin yesterday added a new ‘margin management’ system to its recently launched Futures trading platform, allowing multiple margin balances for a trader’s different positions.

Margin management replaces a previous system which allowed only a single margin balance for all positions held. This meant that gains and losses of individual positions had the potential to impact each other by drawing on the same margin balance.

An OKCoin representative said:

“As a pioneer of crypto-futures trading, OKCoin has devoted time to refining its platform to accommodate the most sophisticated traders in the market. With that in mind, we have been working over the past month to bring to life our new margin management system.”

Isolating risk

It is common practice amongst traders to have multiple positions open simultaneously, with some advanced users preferring to manage the amount of risk that they bear for each individual position.

OKCoin said some traders find that a one-size-fits-all margin system with a single balance lacks flexibility.

The exchange’s solution was to utilize a system called ‘fixed margin’. Under this system, traders’ positions are grouped into four types according to contract lengths: weekly, biweekly, monthly, and quarterly.

Contracts of each type are designated a fixed amount of margin the trader can then add to or reduce as needed.

The advantage of the new system is that if a position or positions turn bad, the impact will be contained, effectively isolating the risk.

While the new system affords traders more control, the original single-balance option will still be available for those who prefer it.

International expansion

Like its Chinese exchange competitors, OKCoin has diversified its feature list in recent months to appeal to a more professional trading market and an international user base.

OKCoin manager of international operations Zane Tackett told CoinDesk the new features have been instrumental in the company’s expansion.

He said:

“Initially our Futures user base was mostly Chinese, coming over from the .cn site or 796, but since we’ve started promoting internationally, we’ve seen the international customer base grow much faster than our Chinese user base.”

OKCoin re-launched its margin trading system in June, shortly after a new English language version of its website went live.

The re-launch was designed to comply with People’s Bank of China (PBOC) advice to reduce the risk of speculative activity, after OKCoin had halted an earlier margin lending and trading system in May.

In August, the firm added the Futures trading platform, which it said solved some of bitcoin’s price volatility issues by ‘locking in’ the price at a set level.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

BitPay API Update Lets Apps Enable Easy Bitcoin Refunds

BitPay has introduced the newest version of its BitPay API, a representational state transfer (RESTful) service that will allow the customers of all API-using developers the ability to initiate refunds directly from those applications.

The updated API follows a string of recent releases for developers from a number of key bitcoin companies, including Coinbase and CEX.io, which revealed new offerings for this community this past week.

For BitPay, however, the emphasis of the release was on the convenience the update will provide for the customers of API users, who will now be able to interact with merchants in a manner more familiar to the users of other payment methods.

BitPay’s Eric Martindale wrote in the official announcement:

“We hope [this] will lead to more smooth Bitcoin payment experiences for everyone, regardless of platform or wallet.”

Outside of this update, Martindale said that BitPay’s primary goal was to better ensure the security of transactions on its platform, and to increase the number of resources available in its API without adding complexity.

For merchants, the company also updated its Billing API so companies that accept bitcoin can automate the submission of bills, allowing them to request future payments.

The API integrates BitPay’s earlier offerings with BitAuth, the company’s decentralized authentication tool. Further, as it uses the Bitcoin Payment Protocol, BitPay refunds will work with any bitcoin address or wallet service.

Move toward tokenization

Yet, another emphasis point for the company was that this latest version of its API cryptographically secures interactions with BitPay through tokenization.

Martindale indicated that all requests made to its API will now need to be signed with BitAuth keypairs. These signatures, he explained, are then matched against other parameters to verify that the security of the payment.

Expanding on the possibilities of this latest addition, Martindale wrote:

“Tokens can be restricted to an identity, requiring a signature by that identity to utilize, or even a list of identities – perhaps a group of devices (such as point of sale tablets) or a list of people and their keys.”

Notably, the movement by BitPay toward tokenization follows Apple’s use of similar security methods for Apple Pay, its new payment product introduced last week.

Open-source API

Overall, BitPay framed the release as one that also opens up the abilities of developers to interface with its API in new and more creative ways.

As such, the post concluded with the company directing users to contributions developers have made to Bitcore, the company’s open-source Javascript library unveiled in February.

BitPay ended this post by further stressing this call to action, adding:

“We look forward to seeing what you build.”

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Downward Pressures Persist as Bitcoin’s Price Declines to Near $400

The price of bitcoin on the CoinDesk USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) declined today from a near-open high of $455.24 to a low of $405.72 at 19:35 UTC, before eventually recovering to a press-time value of $421.42.

Prices were similarly affected on the CoinDesk CNY Bitcoin Price Index, which hit a high of ¥2,824.17, before falling 7% to a daily low of ¥2,517.74.

The turbulent day is the latest blow to the price of bitcoin, which has been in unsteady decline since July. Then, optimism was high New York’s proposed bitcoin regulations would usher in a new era of legitimacy for bitcoin businesses, however, a reversal of this sentiment has since given way to concerns about overall merchant bitcoin adoption and industrial mining, and their effects on the market.

Larger arguments aside, Raffael Danielli, who runs quantitative analysis blog Matlab Trading, sees the day’s decline as the result of protective and pragmatic maneuvers by the market’s many more active traders.

Danielli told CoinDesk:

“I think today was more of a technical move. Many traders probably had $450 as their lower bound exit point, and so they got out.”

While straightforward, the explanation is just one of many that proliferated throughout the bitcoin community during the day’s trading.

OTC and miner trading

The day’s price action provided additional fuel to the ongoing debate over whether the more widespread merchant adoption of bitcoin has lead to a weakening of demand in bitcoin’s markets.

Payza business consultant Charlie Shrem took to Reddit to rebuff this theory, asserting that since much of this selling happens outside major exchanges, or over the counter (OTC) where exchange prices are used as a guide, this trading has little impact on the listing price on major order books.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Tim Swanson, author the new book The Anatomy of a Money-like Informational Commodity, offered an opposing view, asserting:

“That is what we are seeing now – it may not matter how many people are ‘buying off-chain’ or ‘off-market’ because no one wants to lose money.”

Swanson went on to suggest that OTC traders may be weakening buying pressure, but that other factors should not be discounted. For instance, he cited the need for bitcoin miners to sell bitcoins at high prices to support their operations, and similar recent observations from cryptonomics writer Robert Sams.

“[Bitcoin] is only as valuable as another party is willing to pay for it,” he added as a reminder.

Merchant market affects

Danielli suggested that merchant adoption may indeed be having an effect on the market, an opinion that is now widely debated in the community.

These market observers point to the fact that though more merchants are accepting bitcoin payments, they are not holding these funds in bitcoin. Thus, they argue, the market is not attracting enough buyers to absorb these bitcoins on the open market.

However, Danielli took this argument a step further, suggesting that this influence is measurable when comparing bitcoin to the second most popular cryptocurrency, litecoin.

For example, he pointed to the difference between performance in the bitcoin and litecoin markets, noting that when bitcoin had fallen 7.5% during the day’s trading, litecoin had declined only 5%.

Cautioning that his observations were only speculation, he added:

“Given that those two coins are mostly the same (professional miners, increasing difficulty, ability to short, available on many exchanges) except that bitcoin can be more easily spend relative to litecoin you could say that merchants might account for around 2.5 percentage points of today’s drop with miners and traders sharing the other 5 percentage point.”

Danielli added that he believes merchant adoption is positive for bitcoin’s long-term price performance, but that given the current general downward trend, it may be detrimental near term.

Further price weakening predicted

In the absence of any larger, positive news, Danielli and Swanson cautioned against speculative answers to the price decline, but suggested that all factors, as well as the perception of these factors, were contributing to the overall down trend.

Danielli added that bearish sentiment could continue, especially as the calendar advances toward the anniversaries of bitcoin’s 2013 highs.

“Year-over-year we are still up,” he said. “It will interesting to see what happens around November when year-over-year might turn negative.”

An informal poll on Reddit suggested this sentiment persisted among traders, with a leading 28% reporting they believe bitcoin’s price will decline to the $350–$400 range in the coming weeks.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Syscoin: Groundbreaking New Platform Opens Bitcoin to Customizable Online Markets

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Syscoin is poised of the most innovative cryptocurrencies to be introduced, possibly since the introduction of Bitcoin itself and through it we can begin to see the potential of virtual currencies. The system is designed to offer something for everyone, from a currency to a virtual marketplace, both of which appear to have user friendly interfaces.

The official website reads:

“Syscoin is a revolutionary cryptocurrency that not only allows low-cost financial transactions like Bitcoin, but provides businesses the infrastructure to trade goods, assets, digital certificates and data securely.”

Syscoin provides a group of growing services, some of which listed below:

• Decentralized marketplaces that allow users to buy and sell nearly anything on a peer-to-peer network and never have to worry about downtime or redundant costs. The system allows for both fully decentralized and centralized markets for the highest levels of flexibility.
• Ease of use is vital to the success of any product or service if you want a large user base and wallet addresses are nearly impossible to memorize without an eidetic memory. Syscoin offers “name aliases” that take those impossible to remember wallet addresses and associate them with an easy to remember “alias.” The only caveat seems to be that each alias must be unique.
• Certificate management using cryptography allows users to issue, authorize and exchange digital certificates of any type. If a user has a provably unique certificate they can register it with Syscoin with either one or multiple parties involved. These certificates can be authenticated by anyone by using Syscoin’s proof of work.
• Merged mining that keeps the Syscoin network healthy and allows miners to get the highest level of profit because Syscoin is universally merge-minable with any other SCRYPT proof of work currency.
• Distributed gaming, elections and polls
• Encrypted communications and shared storage
• Escrow accounts planned for the near future

Syscoin leverages the Bitcoin protocol and Bitcoin technology in some unique ways that have the potential to be revolutionary.  Syscoin is licensed under the MIT license terms and they have a brand new website, forums and a new blog to help keep Syscoin users informed and up-to-date on any related news. They seem to also be still seeking code testers to keep improving security as they expand into new areas.

Change is sometimes very hard for many people. If anyone doubts this ask yourself why the United States avoids the metric system. A new economic paradigm for a large portion of the world will seem extremely confusing if it is not presented in familiar terms.  Personal computers hit a wall with MSDOS simply because people did not want to learn a new language. But when Microsoft introduced Windows the landscape changed because users could operate in a more comfortable atmosphere.

Syscoin’s everything under one roof plan and its understanding of the majority of people’s reluctance to change their routines and habits, could present a foundation on which other similar businesses may be built. However one thing is for certain: Syscoin seems to have gotten off to an excellent beginning with its new platform.

Source : http://cointelegraph.com

Alibaba's US IPO May Have Crashed the Bitcoin Price

 

Alibaba’s IPO (Initial Public Offering) is set to take place today at 11.00 AM ET on NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) under the ticker BABA. The IPO of Alibaba will become the largest IPO of a company in the United States, ever. Alibaba Group will price its shares at 68 USD, which makes their company worth 21.8 billion dollars.

The Bitcoin price has plummeted by more than $60 or 12.5% this week. Just yesterday the Bitcoin price went from 450 USD per bitcoin to $407. The price has not been this low since April 2014, after a long decline from the massive spike during the Chinese fall where one bitcoin was worth almost 1200 USD. View the chart below, the intersection shows April 8th to 10th 2014.

Chart from Bitcoinwisdom

As Ian Worrall from Sembro Development told us:

The Alibaba IPO has generated a lot of noise in the financial markets as the IPO date has drawn closer… The largest Bitcoin exchange by volume, BTC China, which covers an average of 38% of the total Bitcoin transactions has averaged around 19,000 Bitcoin per day in trades. …the volume is currently up over 52% at 29,400 Bitcoin and rising.

Earn Bitcoin Points by Creating a User on CCN & Join the Discussions!

He then continues to say:

On top of increased volume on Chinese exchanges, the volume on the European exchange platform Bitstamp is up well over 100% today at around 21,400 Bitcoin compared to the monthly average of 9,200 Bitcoin. This is right after many of the leading German analysts from renowned investment banks have indicated that Alibaba is a strong buy… Based on this information, we have concluded that many large Bitcoin investors from China and Europe have exited their positions in Bitcoin to put into the Alibaba IPO.

So what will happen with the Bitcoin price now? Did Bitcoin just lose some of its biggest investors (Chinese as well as Americans)? The price of one bitcoin is record low, and other investors might see this as a great opportunity to get a stronger grip on the Bitcoin market. My guess is that it will soon rebound, big time.

Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group is known as a giant Chinese e-commerce company that owns everything from Alibaba.com, ShopRunner and Lyft. It was started by the former English teacher Jack Ma in 1999. Alibaba started as an online marketplace for businesses but quickly expanded to different segments and services, like consumer products and payments.

Source : http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com

C4 Launches World’s First Bitcoin Certification Program

The CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4), has announced the world’s first Bitcoin certification program aimed at helping solve the skills shortage as it relates to the burgeoning Bitcoin technology adoption. With Bitcoin related start-ups continuing to gain attention from venture capitalists and existing multinational companies now accepting Bitcoin payments, there is a lack of skilled technical experts available to hiring managers and technical recruiters around the world looking to fill Bitcoin roles.

Personally, this is exciting news for many people who want to put their knowledge and skills related to Bitcoin to a test. It can definitely expand your knowledge of cryptocurrency as a whole as well. A unique idea which, from my short time researching it, it definitely puts your knowledge of cryptocurrency to a test. It is true when they say there is a lack of skilled experts int he Bitcoin field, and this certification may be what separates those who don’t know from those who are very experienced in the field.

“Over the next few years, several thousand people will be hired in this space. The certification program from C4 will be an important way for startups to evaluate the knowledge and skills of job applicants,” said Andreas Antonopoulos, author of “Mastering Bitcoin – Unlocking Digital Crypto-Currencies.”

He added:

“While it’s getting easier to use every day, the fact is that Bitcoin can be difficult to use until you understand it, just like email was in the ’80s. However in this case it’s digital money instead of digital mail,” said Michael Perklin, President, C4. “If your company will be handling cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, you’ll need staff and experts who know how Bitcoin works in order to ensure your funds are stored safely.

“While C4 is certifying existing professionals now, they are already working with schools and training companies to ensure their courses will cover the necessary material in order to prepare students for C4′s exams. Russell Verbeeten, C4′s Director of Education says CBP-compliant curriculums will be available soon. Additional certifications such as the Certified Bitcoin Expert (CBX) will be available this winter which will cover advanced technical knowledge required by developers and security professionals. Further certifications for alternative cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, the brainchild of Vitalik Buterin, are also planned for release”

This is a very intriguing idea for Bitcoin experts all over the world. It gives people an incentive to actually complete their certification. This is  a way of showing others that you actually have knowledge in the field. Not only this, you are one of the most knowledgeable in the Bitcoin field. It puts everything we know about cryptocurrency to test, from mining to how the blockchain works, and that is something crucial when speaking of cryptocurrency. The understanding of the blockchain and how it interacts with the coin itself  is very important, and I love the idea proposed by this type of certification.

Source : http://bitcoinist.net

BitLanders Review:Social Media That Pays Bitcoin

 

BitLanders, formerly known as the Film Annex, is a social media site that pays its users in Bitcoin. It first came to my attention earlier this year when I was planning to write a profile on Roya Mahboob and Fereshteh Forough, co-founders of the Women’s Annex (At the time, it was still named the Film Annex).

The Film Annex was started in 2006 by Italian entrepreneur Francesco Rulli with the aims of providing film makers a site to promote their work and help fund their projects with a shared advertising model. This model would soon inspire Mahboob and Forough in 2012 when they founded the Women’s Annex to promote online and digital literacy for women and children in their area of Central Asia.

It would be later that they would incorporate Bitcoin as their method of paying users because it would be able to provide a safe, quick and global way to send funds to users around the world.

Social media that pays… but how?

 

BitLanders works by calculating your social engagement into a ‘BuzzScore.’ The BuzzScore is a competitive ranking from 0 to 100 that reflects your ability to involve users on your posts, blogs, videos, pictures, content, you name it. This takes into account how many people subscribe to your content, ‘buzz’ (which is like a facebook ‘like’) your content as well as comment.

After your BuzzScore is calculated at the end of every day, you are given a certain amount of Bitcoin as reflected by your BuzzScore and the current Bitcoin price. This money comes from a shared advertisement model. (At the moment, BitLanders does not have any ads; they are anticipating returning to advertisements with a native advertisement model as well.)

Now that I’ve gotten the basics out of the way, let’s review the site.

Usability

You can use BitLanders similarly to how you use Facebook, WordPress, Twitter and Tumblr making the site versatile and easy to use. There is a slight hitch – in order to keep the site fruitful to positive social media and creative content, the BitLanders team monitors what is posted so that it doesn’t land the site in hot water; It’s a good thing and a bad thing. Ultimately, because you have access to other social networking sites, BitLanders itself provides a unique experience aimed at the content creator.

The site is slow, however. With more and more users joining, the site gets bogged down with requests and many times keeping the site from loading. The BitLanders team is working hard to address this issue, but being a centralized organization over the content being shared, it’s not always that easy.

Usability: 3.5/5

Content

BitLanders has its own unique experience. Instead of a profile picture, you have an avatar that you can edit to reflect you physically, metaphorically, or in any way you want. Personally, I like that more than having to judge someone on profile picture alone. It removes the personal face from your content and makes the site much more content-based.

Unlike Facebook, you’re not going to see a lot of angry political banter or inflammatory. Unlike Tumblr, you’re not going to see sexually explicit content. The closest platform I would compare it to is Twitter, given that BitLanders allows you post  in 160 characters ‘microblogs,’ however you can post full blog posts which emulate Tumblr’s format. You can also post ‘Galleries’ which remind me of Facebook’s albums and you can upload your films which is pretty straight forward.

Content 4/5

Community

There is a vibrant community of content creators here and they post a lot of great work – from stop-motion animation to updates on feature films; from experimental photography to personal thoughts. There is a lot to find and what’s even better is that they’re very diverse. It’s easy to find film makers and photographers, graphic designers and animators and many more from all areas of the world. I personally enjoy the videographers who show me artifacts and landmarks in countries I may never visit.

However, because BitLanders has the appeal of paying Bitcoin as according to their buzz score, it has attracted a lot of people who just want the money, so they keep asking for unwarranted engagement to falsely push up their buzzscore. This tends to create a lot of clutter, but the BitLanders team is trying to comb through their users and find out which are just fake, empty accounts that don’t create any good content or post content that is not their own.

If you choose who you subscribe to and you keep focused on content, you should have no problem in finding a great community to share with.

Community: 4/5

Revenue

After about a month, I’ve accrued almost $35 in Bitcoin.

Personally, I don’t see my experience with BitLanders as primarily a way to get money, but it is a great bonus. If you regularly post, it’s not uncommon to reach a medium buzzscore of 50, in which you’ll be paid about $1 a day in Bitcoin at that current trade value. Your revenue is paid in denominations of bitcoin, so when bitcoin rises in value, so too will your account’s revenue, but also will follow suit when bitcoin drops in value.

At the moment, the BitLanders team has implemented a bonus system, where you’ll get +1 to your BuzzScore for every person who subscribes to you in that day, with a maximum of +10 for the day. You can get additional bonuses if you invite others to BitLanders.

Here’s the rub, you have two options with your revenue: Either you can use your bitcoins in their on-site store to purchase a wide variety of gift cards from Amazon to Skype, or you must wait 75 days and have a balance of over .2 BTC in order to withdraw your bitcoins to an external wallet.

Here’s an even bigger rub for US members – in order to stay away from any legal ground area, BitLanders require that before withdrawing Bitcoin, you submit your social security number or tax ID number as well as a mailing address. While I have seen a number of accounts located in the US, it just goes to show you how overbearing US regulation have become in their staunch stance against ‘money laundering’ and ‘trafficking.’

Once again, I wouldn’t focus social media on money alone. I enjoy BitLanders because I get to post my work, engage an international audience, and pick up a few bucks here and there, without those useless ‘get free bitcoin’ sites.

Source : http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com

Why The Bitcoin Price Dropped Today

Normally in the Bitcoin world sudden price fluctuations ranging from $10-$30 can be attributed to market manipulation by large holders of the virtual currency. However, when the price changes greater than $30 in a short period of time there is typically something more behind it such as imposed government regulations or technical implications such as a mining pool nearing 51% of the total network hash rate.

Today, September 18, 2014, the price of Bitcoin is down 9.39% ($42.70) at the time of writing this article and has decreased by a whopping 17% this week (≈$70) with no clear indications as to why. Through our analysis we believe we have determined the reason. It has nothing to do with the Bitcoin industry but rather the upcoming IPO of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, which is set to go public tomorrow, Friday the 19th, which would bring in a vast amount of support from Chinese investors from banks to individuals who have wanted to showcase that the Chinese market means business for quite some time, and this is their golden ticket to do so.

The Alibaba IPO has generated a lot of noise in the financial markets as the IPO date has drawn closer and tonight the leading Wall Street investment banks are holding a meeting to determine the official share pricing of Alibaba as it hits the markets tomorrow. Originally the price per share was said to be in the $60 range, but earlier this week Alibaba raised that estimate to $66-$68 per share. We believe that the Chinese Bitcoin holders began dumping their holdings earlier this week to free up capital to invest in Alibaba when it goes public.

The largest Bitcoin exchange by volume, BTC China, which covers an average of 38% of the total Bitcoin transactions has averaged around 19,000 Bitcoin per day in trades. Today, the volume is currently up over 52% at 29,400 Bitcoin and rising.

On top of increased volume on Chinese exchanges, the volume on the European exchange platform Bitstamp is up well over 100% today at around 21,400 Bitcoin compared to the monthly average of 9,200 Bitcoin. This is right after many of the leading German analysts from renowned investment banks have indicated that Alibaba is a strong buy.

Based on this information, we have concluded that many large Bitcoin investors from China and Europe have exited their positions in Bitcoin to put into the Alibaba IPO.

Are these investors gone for good? No, many factors will determine how long it is before these investors close their positions in Alibaba and re-enter the Bitcoin market. If the Wall Street banks issue an initial price lower than expected we could see the price rebound slightly as soon as tonight. After that, the key factors will include how the price fluctuates during the public offering tomorrow and Post-IPO early next week. If Alibaba remains strong and continues to grow in value, we may not see this money flow back into the Bitcoin market until a “bump” in the economy occurs.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has kept interest rates low as indicated in their public statement yesterday, but they intend to begin raising them as we head into 2015. If this scenario were to occur mid-2015 would be a definite point in time when the investment money flows back into Bitcoin, and at even greater volume due to the gains achieved by investing in Alibaba long-term.

Is it guaranteed that the money will flow back into Bitcoin? While nothing is ever set in stone, our research has shown a correlation between the price of Gold and Bitcoin price movements. This being said, Gold tends to rise, based on historical records, when the markets start to become unstable. So we do believe that a vast majority of the money invested in Alibaba and the gains associated will find its way back into Bitcoin.

Source : http://bitcoinmagazine.com