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The post Foreign Exchange Strategist Warns Against Buying Bitcoin During Price Drop appeared first on CCN

Boris Schlossberg, a foreign exchange strategist at BK Asset Management, has warned investors that bitcoin’s price decline has lured many people to mistakenly think the price decline represents a good buying opportunity. Schlossberg warns people not to fall victim to what he considers a false hope, according to CNBC. Bitcoin suffered once of its most dramatic

The post Foreign Exchange Strategist Warns Against Buying Bitcoin During Price Drop appeared first on CCN

Amazon is taking over the world, and it has one secret weapon making its conquest possible.

The online retailer blows its competition out of the water when it comes to customer loyalty. In a recent survey from RBC Capital Markets, 93% of the 2,200 Americans surveyed said they use Amazon more than any other online retailer over the past year. That's quite the market penetration.

Amazon isn't just good, it's getting better. In 2015, the gap between Amazon and the next closest retailer, eBay, was 52 percentage points. In 2017, the gap is 59 points.

Among the huge swath of Americans that use Amazon, nearly half of them use the service at least two to three times a month. They spend a lot of money too. 33% of those surveyed by RBC said they spend more than $800 annually.

Take a second to let that sink in. About the same number of people surveyed that have used eBay in the past year have spent more than $800 at Amazon.

These would be impressive numbers for any company, but don't think that success is slowing Amazon down at all. More than half of those surveyed, 55%, have signed up for Amazon Prime. This means Amazon brings in about $6.4 billion a year in Prime subscriptions alone, according to RBC.

Those Prime subscribers are really loyal customers. Nearly half of those subscribers are spending more than $800 a year at Amazon and 74% of them are shopping with Amazon at least twice a month.

America must be envious of all their neighbors Amazon branded boxes showing up each month because more and more people are signing up for Prime. Six percent of America signed up for Prime last year.

This kind of customer loyalty means bad things for competitors. When Amazon entered the grocery store business by buying Whole Foods, grocery stocks lost $24 billion of value in a week as their stocks tanked.

The Amazon effect is so strong that fund managers are starting to look for stocks the company can't conquer.

All of these numbers come from RBC's survey, which only hit 2,200 Americans, so the results aren't perfect but they certainly are impressive.

Shares of Amazon currently trade at $975.35 and is up 29.45% this year. 

Click here to watch Amazon's stock price in real time...

SEE ALSO: Blue Apron got Amazon'd before it even became a public company

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NOW WATCH: How to buy and sell bitcoin using one of the most popular cryptocurrency apps on the iPhone

The post Non-Profit Internet Archive Gains $1 Million Bitcoin Donation from Charity appeared first on CCN

The Pineapple Fund, which makes donations in bitcoin to charitable organizations, has gifted $1 million worth of bitcoin to the Internet Archive, a non-profit created to build an Internet library. The Pineapple Fund stated on Reddit that the Internet Archive becomes more valuable by the day, archiving books, abandoned games and sites and communities that

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The post Winklevoss Twins Will Not Sell, Even if Bitcoin Price Hits $380,000 appeared first on CCN

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, better known as the Winklevoss twins, still believe bitcoin will remain as the best investment over the next few decades. $8 Trillion Market Cap In 2012, when Facebook went public, the Winklevoss twins received $45 million from the settlement of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In spite of their lawyers’

The post Winklevoss Twins Will Not Sell, Even if Bitcoin Price Hits $380,000 appeared first on CCN

• Despite bitcoin's wild price moves, it's still not considered a risk to the financial system.
• But it could start to matter a lot more to the coal market, according to Jordan Rochester, an FX strategist at Nomura.
• China is the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, and it hosts more than half of the world's bitcoin-mining pools.

On a normal day, bitcoin can shed or gain several thousand dollars of its value with double-digit percentage moves.

While experts debate bitcoin's role in a world still dominated by fiat currencies, the real risk is how the cryptocurrency starts to affect other markets, according to Jordan Rochester, a foreign-exchange strategist at Nomura.

In a note on Monday, Rochester forecast that bitcoin would have a growing impact on energy markets, particularly coal.

Uncovering new bitcoins for use, a process known as mining, requires a lot of electricity. And China, the world's largest coal producer and consumer, hosts about 71% of the cryptocurrency's mining pools, Rochester said.

"Estimates were made in March 2016 expecting Bitcoin's energy consumption to match that of Denmark by 2020," Rochester said.

"Today bitcoin already has matched that, three years ahead of schedule. So if it's not risk-off inspired price action from bitcoin that moves other markets how about higher energy costs?"

Bitcoin's energy consumption stems partly from the fact that it's a proof-of-work cryptocurrency, meaning miners are rewarded for solving mathematical puzzles on the blockchain and for helping to prevent attacks on the bitcoin network. As the calculations get more complicated, more energy is required.

"For as long as POW is the most common form of cryptocurrency, this could start to have an economic and environmental cost," said Rochester, who disclosed that he "holds a personal interest in bitcoin and ethereum."

Bitcoin, with a market value of nearly $300 billion, already affects other asset classes. Chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD have been supported by demand for their products to mine bitcoin. In more baffling moves, some stocks have surged right after the companies announced they were adding the word "blockchain" to their names.

"It may be too early for Bitcoin to have a global impact on other asset markets at this stage," Rochester said.

"Instead, we need to look where investors are most exposed on a regional basis for where this cross-market correlation could bite. With Japan accounting for nearly half of global trade in bitcoin compared with just 25% in the US, it could be in Asia where Mrs. Watanabe pulls back."

Sign up here for Crypto Insider, BI's roundup of all the bitcoin and cryptocurrency news you need to know today.

SEE ALSO: Bitcoin bull Tom Lee has identified 12 stocks that are perfect if you don’t want to own it

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NOW WATCH: The chief global strategist at Charles Schwab says stocks will keep soaring in 2018

The post Bitcoin Value = $0? Morgan Stanley Makes a Flawed Argument appeared first on CCN

Earlier this week, Morgan Stanley, the third largest investment bank in the global finance market with a $95 billion market cap behind Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, stated in a research paper that the future value of bitcoin could drop to zero, given its lack of “intrinsic value” and base price. A few days ago,

The post Bitcoin Value = $0? Morgan Stanley Makes a Flawed Argument appeared first on CCN

The post Cryptocurrency Market Recovers: Bitcoin Price Rebounds to $14,000 on Christmas appeared first on CCN

On December 25, Christmas day, the bitcoin price rebounded to $14,000 after recording a major correction that sent its value plummeting to $11,500. Bitcoin Optimistic Short-Term Price Trend Overall, the cryptocurrency market recovered from a correction that occured on December 23, in merely 48 hours. Two days ago, every single cryptocurrency in the market ranging

The post Cryptocurrency Market Recovers: Bitcoin Price Rebounds to $14,000 on Christmas appeared first on CCN

• Apple has had a great year, outpacing the general market and remaining the most valuable company by market cap.
• But demand for the iPhone may be slowing and its services business could fail to launch, according to a Mizuho analyst.
• Watch Apple's stock trade in real time here.

Apple has had a great 2017, growing its share price by about 50% and while adding $275 billion to its market cap.

Apple didn't get there by accident. In 2017, it released a brand new iPhone, Apple Watch, and iMac, in addition to a number of new software products. The company doesn't look like it's slowing down in 2018 either. For Apple investors, whittling the company's wide-ranging initiatives down to just the most important can be a challenge. 

But, according to Abhey Lamba, an analyst at Mizuho, there are just two important factors to Apple's success in 2018.

Watch how the iPhone X demand plays out

The iPhone X is Apple's much-hyped flagship phone. It has set a high bar for other phone makers with a gorgeous, bezel-less display, FaceID unlocking, and augmented reality features.

Lines for the phone were predictably long at launch, and delivery dates for online orders initially stretched weeks past the planned date. Watching how this strong launch demand stretches into 2018 should interest Apple investors, Lamba told Markets Insider.

Some analysts say the high price point and lack of features that users actually care about could hinder the phone's overall performance in 2018. Steven Milunovich, an analyst at UBS, has said that speculation about a "supercycle" for the iPhone X was overblown. Lamba is less sure but says he will be watching sales of the phone closely, especially in the first quarter next year.

Will Apple's services continue to grow?

CEO Tim Cook has said Apple's services business would rival a Fortune 100 company by 2017, and it largely has, bringing in $29.98 billion in the most recent fiscal year. As its primary business of selling iPhones starts to run out of ways to expand, Apple could look to services as its next area for growth. Lamba said that selling iPhones is more of a "replacement business" now, and services are just one way the company could make up for the expected slowdown in revenue growth.

The iPhone still represents a huge part of Apple's business, and will likely continue to do so in 2018. But Apple has said it wants to spend $1 billion on television content in the coming year and just bought music identification app Shazam for an estimated $400 million. The company's payments and cloud business are part of its services offerings too, and Lamba says it will be interesting to watch the moves the company makes in that sector in 2018.

It will be "extremely hard" to match the legendary performance of the iPhone though, Lamba said.

Lamba is cautiously optimistic on Apple. Its competition in the phone business is only getting tougher, and building another cash cow like the iPhone will take time and skill. That caution is what led Lambda to be one of the few analysts on Wall Street without a "Buy" rating for the company.

Lamba is neutral on Apple with a price target of $160, which is about 8.5% below its current price of $175.

Read more about what's coming for the tech industry in 2018.

SEE ALSO: TOP TECH ANALYST: Only one thing could stop the FANGs from skyrocketing in 2018

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NOW WATCH: Here's what bitcoin futures could mean for the price of bitcoin

The post Israel Regulator Threatens to Ban Bitcoin Firms from Stock Exchange appeared first on CCN

The chairman of Israel’s capital markets authority will propose a regulation to ban companies based on cryptocurrencies like bitcoin from trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Speaking at a business conference today, Israel Securities Authority (ISA) chairman Shmuel Hauser said he will bring to the authority’s board a regulatory proposal to enforce a sweeping

The post Israel Regulator Threatens to Ban Bitcoin Firms from Stock Exchange appeared first on CCN

• Meghan Markle made her first appearance with the rest of the royals on Christmas Day.
• She visited the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Sandringham, Norfolk.
• The Queen spends every year at Sandringham with her family.

Meghan Markle has joined the British royals on their best-known Christmas tradition — a festive church service which the whole family attends.

Markle, arm in arm with fiancé Prince Harry, was photographed outside the Church of St Mary Magdalene, just outside the Queen's estate in Sandringham, Norfolk, where she always spends Christmas.

She walked with Prince William and his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Also in the party were Prince Charles, who will become Markle's father-in-law when she and Harry marry in May 2018.

It is her first public appearance with other senior royals, and she posed with photographs with the whole group, including the Queen.

Previous generations of princes did not bring their fiancées with them to Sandringham until after they were married, but that precedent was broken this year with Markle's arrival.

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NOW WATCH: Economist Jim Rickards on gold versus bitcoin — intrinsic value is meaningless for both but the bitcoin prices aren't real

The post Turing Community Seeks To Save The Internet With Distributed Architecture, Will Give Away Litecoins appeared first on CCN

This is a sponsored story. CCN urges readers to conduct their own research with due diligence into the company, product or service mentioned in the content below. The man who saved Litecoin with Segregated Witness will soon be using Litecoin, now the fastest growing cryptocurrency, to save the Internet.   On April 21, PZ, a core

The post Turing Community Seeks To Save The Internet With Distributed Architecture, Will Give Away Litecoins appeared first on CCN

The post We Aren’t Looking to Regulate Bitcoin, Says EU Commissioner appeared first on CCN

A high ranking European Union official has dismissed suggestions of the EU looking at regulating bitcoin markets and exchanges. In an interview with Bloomberg, Pierre Moscovici – European Union Commissioner for economic, financial affairs, taxation and customs, played down talk of supposed EU-wide bitcoin regulations while revealing the EU’s view of the cryptocurrency. “At this

The post We Aren’t Looking to Regulate Bitcoin, Says EU Commissioner appeared first on CCN

• A bitcoin was worth $14,090 at 9.15 a.m. GMT on Christmas day.
• The cryptocurrency has had an extraordinarily volatile time recently.
• Its value has fallen sharply over the past week, and has been declining more modestly since.

The price of bitcoin was trending downward on Christmas morning as the cryptocurrency reeled in the aftermath of its most volatile period ever.

As of 9.15 a.m. Christmas morning (GMT), bitcoin was valued at $14,090 according to data from Markets Insider.

The cryptocurrency had lost around 1.1% of its value in the past 24 hours.

The movement is a modest lost after much sharper gains earlier in the week, when bitcoin plummeted from an all-time high of $19,843.

Its value is down more than 30% in a single week after a sharp depreciation which began around December 17 and 18.

The currency briefly dipped below $11,000, shedding nearly half its value in a matter of days.

Bitcoin then rallied above $15,000, but has been sinking since.

Nonetheless, the recent spike and decline still represents an enormous increase in value over the course of the year.

A bitcoin bought on January 1, 2017 has increased in value more than twelve-fold, despite the late December drop.

The currency is difficult to value with any objective criteria, and traditional investors remain very wary of it.

Yesterday, Business Insider highlighted a note from investment analysts at Morgan Stanley, which suggested that bitcoin may soon have a practical value of nothing.

Analyst James Faucette highlighted the tiny number, and declining, number of retailers prepared to exchange bitcoin for actual goods, which could spell a rocky future.

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NOW WATCH: The 5 issues to consider before trading bitcoin futures

• Business Insider UK spoke with Garrick Hileman about Bitcoin mining.
• Hileman explains why Bitcoin mining might not be as profitable in the future.
• As more users are mining Bitcoin, the amount rewarded for doing so is going down.

Business Insider UK spoke with University of Cambridge Research Fellow Garrick Hileman about cryptocurrency mining and the potential problems that it could bring in the future. 

He explains that the amount of Bitcoin rewarded for mining is halved every four years which means that it will be less profitable.

Read the full transcript below. 

Garrick Hileman: So as we look into the future and the reward of new Bitcoins is reduced from the current 12.5 to about 6.25 new Bitcoins every ten minutes which will occur in around July 2020.

Every four years that reward gets cut in half. Eventually you get to the point where the nominal number of new Bitcoins you earn for mining Bitcoin becomes quite small. Now if the price of Bitcoin continues to climb above 100,000 per Bitcoin, then mining a tiny fraction of Bitcoin still is quite lucrative.

But ultimately the number of new Bitcoins coming into existence through mining will be cut to zero. We’ll hit the 21 million limit and the only direct financial incentive left to mine Bitcoin will be transaction fees and there’s an open question as to whether or not the transaction fees will provide a sufficient financial incentive to maintain the kind of computing power that Bitcoin enjoys today which is essential to its security.

If the computational power applied to the Bitcoin network is reduced sufficiently it arguably makes it easier to mount a 51 per cent attack to disrupt the network and so there could be some issues down the road if the rewards are not sufficient.

However there could be a reason to subsidise the cost of mining if Bitcoin continues to be a valuable asset because, simply, they own a lot of Bitcoin and so they are willing to lose money on mining to maintain a secure network.

Produced by Jasper Pickering. Camera by Leon Siciliano. Research by Fraser Moore.

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The post Swiss Online Bank Launches Bitcoin Product appeared first on CCN

There is a financial revolution on the way. A revolution born out of the need for greater accountability and transparency in the financial industry. A revolution born on the disintermediation and decentralization of banking services and underpinned by technological tour de force, Bitcoin. Bitcoin has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years, from

The post Swiss Online Bank Launches Bitcoin Product appeared first on CCN

• Increased tensions in the Middle East could drive up oil prices and have knock-on effects on global inflation, according to analysis by Nomura.
• A bigger proxy war in the Middle East is one of the financial firm's "grey swan" events that could threaten markets in 2018.
• If Brent oil was to rise to $80 per barrel, UK headline inflation could rise by 0.7 percentage points.

LONDON — Increased tensions in the Middle East next year could drive up global oil prices and have knock on effects on inflation, according to new analysis by financial firm Nomura.

A "bigger proxy war in the Middle East" is one of Nomura's 10 possible "grey swan" events for 2018. These are unlikely but impactful scenarios that could impact markets next year, outside of the more widely discussed possibilities such as the Italian election and US impeachment risk.

Recent conflicts in the Middle East have "tended to start with a bang, but then assumed a 'low intensity' character" without engulfing the entire region, as occurred in Yemen and Qatar, the analysis said. Although it is likely "this pattern will hold in 2018," it said, intensified tensions could threaten regional stability and drive up oil prices.

Yemen is currently experiencing a conflict in which more than 60,000 people have been killed or wounded, and which has triggered a cholera epidemic and famine. Meanwhile, Qatar is suffering from a blockade enforced in June by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt.

Heightened tensions in the region would likely drive up global oil prices, the analysis said, and have a knock-on effect on global inflation.

Here's the chart:

Under a stress test scenario in which Brent oil rises to $80 per barrel, an increase of around 30% from current prices, headline inflation in 2018 would rise by 0.4 and 0.9 percentage points in the US and eurozone respectively, while Japan could see core inflation breaching 1.5%.

The biggest winners from an oil price shock (outside those directly affected by regional tensions) would be Russia, Colombia, Malaysia and Brazil. Meanwhile, the analysis said, China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, South Africa and Turkey would be among the losers.

The risk of imminent escalation are biggest in two areas, the analysis said.

The first is Yemen, where Houthi rebels have already shown they can fire missiles targetting Riyadh. If such attacks continue, it said, Saudi Arabia may decide to increase its military involvement in Yemen, increasing the risk of a direct clash with Iran.

Lebanon/Palestine is the second. Although the risk of a proxy war in Lebanon increased after the unexpected resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, this seems to have been diffused, the analysis said. But US President Donald Trump's recognition, earlier this month, of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel may increase this risk again, as Lebanon's Hezbollah and Palestine's Hamas have called for a renewed "intifada," or violent uprising, in response to Trump's decision.

Palestine has since said it will not accept any US role in peace processes from now on.

If these risks materialize, Nomura said, credit default swap spreads and the currencies of those Middle Eastern countries involved "may come under pressure."

On Monday, consultancy Control Risks said rivalry in the Middle East will "inform and inflame conflicts and enmities in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen and between Israel and the Palestinian Territories."

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NOW WATCH: We talked to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman about tax reform, Trump, and bitcoin

The post (+) Ripple XRP Shows Resilience Amid Broader Holiday Slump appeared first on CCN

The post (+) Ripple XRP Shows Resilience Amid Broader Holiday Slump appeared first on CCN