Coin News

Over the past several days, investors have witnessed sudden gains in volume and extreme price volatility for litecoin. In the last week litecoin has gained over 79 percent against bitcoin, 88 percent against the U.S. dollar and 90 percent against the euro and the yuan. Much of the rapid increase in volume around litecoin trading was coming from Chinese markets, which is cause for concern at Huobi, a major digital currency exchange based in Beijing. According to Arthur Hayes, the Cofounder and CTO of BitMEX, a litecoin ponzi scheme may have caused both bitcoin price and volume increases on Chinese digital currencies exchanges in the last few days. Huobi CEO Leon Li told Bitcoin Magazine that the exchange had taken steps in the wake of the […]

The post Chinese Bitcoin Exchanges: Litecoin Price Volatility Driving Bitcoin Gains, Not Chinese Stock Market appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Over the past several days, investors have witnessed sudden gains in volume and extreme price volatility for litecoin. In the last week litecoin has gained over 79 percent against bitcoin, 88 percent against the U.S. dollar and 90 percent against the euro and the yuan. Much of the rapid increase in volume around litecoin trading was coming from Chinese markets, which is cause for concern at Huobi, a major digital currency exchange based in Beijing. According to Arthur Hayes, the Cofounder and CTO of BitMEX, a litecoin ponzi scheme may have caused both bitcoin price and volume increases on Chinese digital currencies exchanges in the last few days. Huobi CEO Leon Li told Bitcoin Magazine that the exchange had taken steps in the wake of the […]

The post Chinese Bitcoin Exchanges: Litecoin Price Volatility Driving Bitcoin Gains, Not Chinese Stock Market appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

F2POOL, one of the largest Chinese bitcoin mining pools has generated the biggest bitcoin transaction ever recorded in an attempt to alleviate the massive spam attack launched on the bitcoin network this week, which Bitcoin Magazine previously covered. An anonymous figure or an organization has sent thousands of micro bitcoin transactions across the network now referred to as “dust,” to temporarily clog up the bitcoin network. While the attack appears to have ended, miners are still catching up on the backlog of transactions. At the time of writing, the number of unconfirmed transactions had dropped to 33,000. In order to process these transactions at a faster rate, F2POOL took the unusual step of creating a custom transaction that occupied an […]

The post F2POOL Generates Biggest Bitcoin Transaction Ever Recorded appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Mixed martial arts students in Las Vegas can now pay for their training in bitcoin if they so choose. They can also buy bitcoin at One Kick Nick's Mixed Martial Arts Gym which now has a bitcoin ATM. The popular Las Vegas gym recently installed a bitcoin ATM to meet the growing interest in bitcoin among the youthful, tech-savvy mixed martial arts community. Bitcoin Direct LLC, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company, mounted the General Bytes ATM on a wall in plain view of visitors and students. Patrons can buy bitcoins from the unidirectional ATM with cash or by using their […]

The post How a Bitcoin ATM Promotes Mixed Martial Arts in a Las Vegas Gym appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

French bank BNP Paribas says the technology underpinning bitcoin has the potential to make existing companies "redundant," a huge admission from one of the world's biggest banks.

Analyst Johann Palychata writes in the company's magazine Quintessence that bitcoin's blockchain, the software that allows the digital currency to function, "should be considered as an invention like the steam or combustion engine," that has the potential to transform the world of finance and beyond.

The blockchain is an online ledger of all the bitcoin transactions that take place. It's spread across thousands of computers and servers globally.

It lets people exchange bitcoin by spreading the record of exchanges and ownership history across a wide area. It adds a layer of trust that is essential to bitcoin — everyone can check a coin hasn't been double spent and is actually owned by the person claiming to.

Palychata says that if this type of technology is applied to securities trading —  the world of buying and selling company shares — then "existing industry players might be redundant."

If investors can trade shares directly with each other in a system that has a layer of trust built into it then middle men — stock brokers — aren't needed anymore.

That's a huge thing for an investment bank to say, especially one of BNP Paribas' size — it's France's biggest bank. 

Most banks have been keen to play down the competition from financial technology, or fintech, startups, saying new technology presents opportunities rather than threats.

Falling technology costs and the disruption that followed the financial crisis of 2008 have lead to a wave of innovation and competition for banks. Bitcoin and the blockchain are some of the most cutting edge financial experiments we've seen.

Banks like Santander and Barclays are investing in and experimenting with financial technology of their own, saying it's a good chance to improve their own services.

But the truth — as Palychata makes clear — is these banks are being forced to innovate. While its unlikely that any one of hundreds of startups currently springing up will replace Santander or Barclays, banks face death by a thousand cuts as startups attack different parts of their businesses from multiple angels. If they don't do something soon it will start to affect the bottom line.

Palychata's scenario of blockchain being applied to stock trading isn't such an outlandish scenario either — US exchange operator Nasdaq is currently experimenting with the blockchain.

That said, Palychata's "redundant" prediction is a worst case scenario. He believes it's more likely that stock broking firms will adopt the blockchain technology to trade among themselves, rather than offer it directly to consumers.

And even if a startup or coder builds a blockchain for trading shares and opens it directly to the public, Palychata thinks the security issues around keeping private keys — the access codes used to get digital assets traded on the blockchain — means current firms could develop a new role as the guardians of these keys.

But the fact that an analyst is using the word "redundant" shows how seriously banks are taking this threat.

Join the conversation about this story »

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CNBC ran an article earlier this week announcing that the Greek Island of Agistri will test Brian Kelly's Nautiluscoin. The tumultuous economic environment in Greece provides the opportune climate to deploy a new altcoin, Kelly argues. The CNBC article is a highlight reel for Nautiluscoin. It never mentions the serious challenges any altcoin faces, or that a rapid large scale deployment of a virtually unknown cryptocurrency is a pipe dream. That makes a lot more sense though, when you realize Brian Kelly is the article's author. What is Nautiluscoin? Nautiluscoin was first heralded in a CNBC article (we'll call this […]

The post Is Nautiluscoin a Scam? appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

CNBC ran an article earlier this week announcing that the Greek Island of Agistri will test Brian Kelly's Nautiluscoin. The tumultuous economic environment in Greece provides the opportune climate to deploy a new altcoin, Kelly argues. The CNBC article is a highlight reel for Nautiluscoin. It never mentions the serious challenges any altcoin faces, or that a rapid large scale deployment of a virtually unknown cryptocurrency is a pipe dream. That makes a lot more sense though, when you realize Brian Kelly is the article's author. What is Nautiluscoin? Nautiluscoin was first heralded in a CNBC article (we'll call this […]

The post Is Nautiluscoin a Scam? appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Reddit's recent controversy is mired in a push to decentralize, and at the heart of that is a technology called Blockchain.

The post This Man Says He Can Save Reddit With the Spirit of Bitcoin appeared first on WIRED.

Apparently, it can be dangerous to get between a man and his games these days, as a young German man's girlfriend recently learned.

The post Gamer Convicted of Drugging Girlfriend So He Could Play appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin News.

With so many Bitcoin exchanges emerging in the last two years, it can get quite confusing knowing where to get your Bitcoins. Most people do “the obvious thing” which is to compare the different Bitcoin exchanges based on the exchange rate and then usually go with the cheapest one. The problem is that the exchange rate is only part of the equation, and sometimes a very small part of it. When trying to figure out how much it will cost you to get your Bitcoin from a specific trading platform or broker, you have to take into account the total […]

The post What Bitcoin Exchanges Won’t Tell You About Fees appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin News.