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First Bitcoin Documentary

China is a Bitcoin powerhouse. An Article by Willie Tan in Cointelegraph recently concluded that 70 percent of Bitcoin mining is located in China. The Chinese have taken to Bitcoin like fish to water and there is no reason why they shouldn’t. China and Bitcoin are like a match made in heaven. Cheap computer hardware, ample hydroelectric power and cool environs all make China the right place for a Bitcoin mine to be located. Recently the 2017 Shape the Future Summit was held at the Hong Kong Grand Hyatt Hotel between Sep. 20, 2017 and Sep. 21, 2017. The event had invitees from 80 enterprises in the Bitcoin industry but the main highlight of the event was the release of the first ever Bitcoin Documentary in China.

First Bitcoin Documentary – Shape the Future

2017 – Shape the Future is a documentary that charts the course of the world’s first digital currency, Bitcoin. The documentary produced by BitKan is supported by Bitmain, Huobi, Bixin and ViaBTC. It begins the story with how Bitcoin came into being and discusses the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto. Just who was this man? Was he even a man or was it a group of men?

Shape the Future takes a uniquely Chinese perspective on the creator and the creation of the digital asset. Still, the question of who is Satoshi Nakamoto will perhaps forever remain a mystery. The film does explore the various possibilities and comes up with the usual suspects including Craig Wright. Xiaoxiao Sun, Bixin Operations Manager alludes in the documentary that the decision of Wikileaks to accept Bitcoin was what prompted Satoshi to evaporate into thin air.

Perhaps the most interesting comment on Satoshi in the documentary comes from BTC123 Founder Bill Mo who says, “Only when he (Satoshi Nakamoto) erased himself can BTC achieve the full decentralization.”

Getting Involved in a Bitcoin Club

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Following the evolution of Bitcoin

The film takes a course that follows the evolution of Bitcoin from its nascent era into becoming a mainstream tradable asset. The coming of the age of exchanges, <Continue Reading>

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Bitcoin Beats Classic Cars, Art, Wines in Luxury Investment Index

As the Bitcoin price starts to regain its strength following the short dip it experienced in the past week, the latest Knight Frank’s Luxury Investment Index, which has risen in value by 5% over the past year, shows that certain luxe collectibles have been plummeting in value.

While this may not directly point at Bitcoin as the next and the most appropriate option to be embraced (it was not mentioned in the Index), the ranking which is based on third-party data that tracks the performance of a representative basket of high-end collectibles, rules out safe haven options such as residential property and gold as the best options for investment in recent times.

Tide is changing

Rather, the tide seems to be changing in favor of non-conventional collectibles like art or wine, based on its assessment of the performance of 10 key luxury investment sectors – cars, art, wine, coins, stamps, jewelry, colored diamonds, Chinese ceramics, watches and antique furniture.

Since early 2016, the value of wine has accelerated rapidly and has now overtaken classic cars which have seen lacklustre sell-through rates with a number of cars not fetching their low reserves at some recent high-profile auction sales, the report says. Wine prices grew by 25% in the last year and 231% in the past decade.

From dominating the rankings over the past few years, classic cars have only appreciated in value by 2% in the last year despite prices have risen by 362% over the past 10 years, while prices of watches have appreciated by 4% and 65% in the past 12 months and over the past decade respectively.

Using data from sources including AMR, Stanley Gibbons, HAGI, Wine Owners and the Fancy Color Research Foundation, the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index, launched in 2013, calculates inflation like a consumer price index.

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Joining a bitcoin club is the easiest way to begin creating wealth. With as just a few hundred dollars, you can be on your way to joining the elite group of bitcoin millionaires. <Join Now>

Compared with what?

It puts, for example, prime central London property as having depreciated by 6% in the last 12 months despite the market having risen by 38% during the last 10 years. It also puts gold prices as having fallen by 5% though bullion prices have risen by a massive 362% since 2007.

Chinese ceramics have been down by 12%, continuing the downward trend over the past five years owing to the slowdown in the Chinese economy while prices of antique furniture fell by an average of 3% within the same period.

Colored diamonds have stagnated in price overall though blue diamonds have risen in value by 5.5% over the past year and since 2007, prices of stamps have risen by 103%, according to specialists Stanley Gibbons.

Fine art appreciated by an average of 7% and collectible coins rose by 4% over the past year though their prices have increased by 182% since 2007, with rare coins from Islamic countries cited as among the biggest risers.

Bitcoin stronger

Bitcoin prices, on the other hand, have risen more than 400% in the past 12 months. They started the year at about $968 and have increased to the current rate of over $4000. This is due to the various advantages digital currency brings over the fiat monetary system which imposes capital controls on the amount of money that can be transacted at a given time in some cases, and daily limits by banks and freezing of accounts in other instances.

Bitcoin also enables global reach, which is <Continue Reading>

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Senate 2018 Budget Adds $1.5 Trillion to National Debt: Bitcoin Bubble?

The US Senate Budget Committee has released its 2018 proposed budget for approval in the larger congressional body. The proposal will then be matched with the House proposed budget and worked out for final approval, before being sent to the White House.

Senate 2018 Budget Adds $1.5 Trillion to National Debt

The Senate proposal contains provisions that will increase federal spending for this year, adding a jaw-dropping $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the next year. Committee members have suggested that the tax cuts would produce economic gains, which would offset the total debt spending.

After 2019, the proposed budget would begin to cut non-defense spending, resulting in substantial budget savings over the next decade. The goal of both the Senate and House proposals is to balance the budget in that time.

Getting Involved in a Bitcoin Club

Joining a bitcoin club is the easiest way to begin creating wealth. With as just a few hundred dollars, you can be on your way to joining the elite group of bitcoin millionaires. <Join Now>

Bitcoin bubble?

After recent comments by the Federal Reserve officers regarding trust in the government, the new budget seems more confidence-eroding than building. While the government can continue to print money and increase the national debt (now nearly $19 trillion), Bitcoin is held at a fixed supply.

Multiple analysts have pointed out that as long as Bitcoin continues to increase in use cases and liquidity, the price per Bitcoin will inevitably increase. <Continue Reading>

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Why Traditional Investors Tend to Think That Bitcoin Is a Bubble

We live in crazy times, don’t we?

Bitcoin, a digital currency, founded in 2009 — and which, as the name suggests, is an electronic currency and cannot be held in a physical wallet — is just about the most valuable “currency” in the world and it has been so for a few years now. Given the circumstances, it’s only normal to question the credibility of Bitcoin. Because who, in the real world, actually believes that an electronic currency, created just about seven years ago, is truly worth more than a fiat currency. Say the British pound, that has been through several economic cycles over several centuries and is still here, right?

Image: tradingeconomics.com

Considering that the one British pound can only buy you 0.00032 BTC, it’s 100 percent okay for traditional investors, most of whose investments are valued in the British pound, US dollar and other fiat currencies, to think Bitcoin is a bubble. But the age of Bitcoin — that is, how long it’s been around — is the least of the reasons for that. Here’re some really popular ones.

The financial crisis

In the last two decades, we’ve witnessed two bubble busts. The dotcom bubble of the late 1990s and the housing bubble that led to the 2008 global financial crisis. For those who were affected by these two bubble busts, it was two wealth-eroding events in less than a decade. A natural response to such an unpleasant experience is defensiveness. After all, once bitten twice shy.

When comparing the assets that led to the dotcom and housing bubbles to Bitcoin, the odds are ridiculously against Bitcoin, at least, in the minds of traditional investors. That’s because, for the dotcom bubble, there were actual Internet companies that were, purportedly, building or selling products and services that people actually use. For instance, Pets.com, quite the most familiar flop from the dotcom bubble, was selling pet food and supplies, which people actually buy. <Continue Reading>

Getting Involved in a Bitcoin Club

Joining a bitcoin club is the easiest way to begin creating wealth. With as just a few hundred dollars, you can be on your way to joining the elite group of bitcoin millionaires. <Sign Up>

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Real Estate Industries in Miami are Embracing Bitcoin

The Miami real estate industry is gradually embracing Bitcoin as realtors realize the merits and advantages of utilizing the Bitcoin network to facilitate the transfer of large-scale transactions.

For many years, the Bitcoin community and experts within the cryptocurrency sector have debated the fundamental purpose of Bitcoin; whether it should operate more as a store of value or a digital cash system that is capable of processing small transactions with substantially low fees like Visa.

As of current, Bitcoin qualifies as both a store of value and a digital cash system. The integration of the Bitcoin Core development team’s transaction malleability and scaling solution Segregated Witness (SegWit) has significantly reduced Blockchain congestion within the Bitcoin network, decreasing the size of the Bitcoin mempool-the holding area for unconfirmed transactions-and the average Bitcoin block size. More to that, less than three percent of Bitcoin’s transactions are SegWit-enabled. As the ratio of SegWit-enabled transaction increase to over 50 percent, Bitcoin transactions will become even cheaper.

As a result, more merchants, investors and users have started to consider and adopt Bitcoin as a financial and a settlement network that is capable of processing both small and large transactions. Within the real estate industry, the majority of transactions or payments are in the millions. But, to process multi-million dollar transactions, banks require extremely high fees, sometimes up to thousands of dollars per transaction.

Several studies and research papers have revealed that Australian and US banks charge up to $4,000 for a $100,000 transaction. If the payment goes up to a few million dollars, the transaction fee will increase proportionally, potentially to $10,000.

In Bitcoin, such high fees can be avoided. Although transaction fees depend on the size of the transaction, it is possible to send a million dollar transaction with less than $10 with a SegWit-enabled wallet. More importantly, if the Bitcoin Blockchain network is less congested and the mempool size is small, it is possible for senders to attach even smaller fees to process the payment.

Real Estate Industries are Embracing Bitcoin

For realtors, the usage of Bitcoin significantly eases the process of facilitating large-scale payments. Not only do multi-million dollar bank wire transfers cost thousands of dollars and take weeks to sometimes months of processing time, they also <Continue Reading>

Getting Involved in a Bitcoin Club

Joining a bitcoin club is the easiest way to begin creating wealth. With as just a few hundred dollars, you can be on your way to joining the elite group of bitcoin millionaires. <Sign Up>

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Market Reaction to China News Shows Bitcoin Too Big to Kill

After a double blow from China, with its ban on ICOs, then news of total exchange bans, not to mention Jamie Dimon’s vitriol against Bitcoin, the digital currency briefly crashed to $3,000 before rapidly soaring back to, and holding, the $4,000 mark, which shows “bitcoin too big to kill”.

Bitcoin Too Big to Kill

Digital currency users are finding ways around the Chinese bans, other countries, like Japan and Hong Kong are profiting, and people are exposing Dimon’s ploy, all indicating that Bitcoin is now stronger than a few bumps in the market’s road.

Still as bullish as ever

Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at Coin Center, a Washington-based nonprofit research firm focusing on cryptocurrencies, sees positives in China’s knee jerk reaction. Valkenburgh said:

“The efficacy of any bitcoin ban is pretty dubious. It’s bullish because if a powerful government like China feels the need to ban major trading, then it’s a good indicator that the technology works and that it does what it’s supposed to. If it overcomes those controls, then it’s further proof that it’s independent from government controls, which  <Read More>  pretty radical.” <Read More>

Getting Involved in a Bitcoin Club

Joining a bitcoin club is the easiest way to begin creating wealth. With as just a few hundred dollars, you can be on your way to joining the elite group of bitcoin millionaires. <Sign Up>

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Japan Becomes Largest Bitcoin Market as Traders Leave China

Japan has once again become the largest Bitcoin exchange market with 50.75 percent market share of the global Bitcoin exchange market. Analysts including BitFury Vice Chairman George Kikvadze attributed the surge in the trading volume of the Japanese Bitcoin exchange market to the exit of Bitcoin traders in China.

Earlier this week, the Chinese government, local authorities and financial regulators officially requested Chinese Bitcoin exchanges and trading platforms to halt their services by the end of September. OKCoin and Huobi, the two largest exchanges in China, were granted leeway to operate until Oct. 30, considering the fact that they have not been involved in any initial coin offerings (ICOs) in the past.

But, it seems as if traders are not willing to take any chances with the Chinese government and their unpredictable nature. The Chinese Bitcoin exchange market’s daily trading volume has halved within a period of three days, from 15 percent to less than seven percent.

According to various trusted Bitcoin market data providers such as CryptoCompare, China only accounts for 6.4 percent of global Bitcoin trades at the time of reporting.

Japan Becomes Largest Bitcoin Market as Traders Leave China

“This is a good thing. China can no longer play with the markets by banning Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency cannot be killed by any country. One solution to centralized exchanges is decentralized ones. I hear the Decred Project team has something cooking that helps with that.”

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Joining a bitcoin club is the easiest way to begin creating massive wealth. With as little as a few hundred dollars or less you can be on your way taking control over your financial future and create substantial wealth. <Learn More>

US market benefits

Prior to the nationwide Bitcoin exchange ban by China, the US exchange market had consistently secured its position as the largest market in the world.

However, almost immediately after the announcement of the country’s three largest Bitcoin exchanges, BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin, were released, traders moved over to the Japanese Bitcoin exchange market. The abrupt migration of traders led to the short-term surge in the trading volume of Japan, allowing the market to overtake the US by over 20 percent in global Bitcoin exchange market share.

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More Attempts to Bring E-Commerce to World’s Two Billion Unbanked

Taking e-commerce to the unbanked seems to be getting easier as the number of merchants embracing cryptocurrencies is increasing. From Overstock to Steam, Newegg to Edeka, many merchants are changing buyers’ user experience globally by leveraging the ease-of-use of digital currency.

This is partially fueled by an increase in the number of vendors registering with BitPay. That service allows merchants to accept Bitcoin but immediately be credited with cash rather than having to deal with the volatile digital currency themselves.

Things are improving on the consumer side too, with the increasing number of crypto-based debit cards. These make it possible to spend digital currency in the virtual shops of merchants who don’t directly accept it, by automatically converting a user’s cryptocurrency balance to fiat and using that to pay vendors.

In this environment, there are startups seeking to make things even easier and cheaper, eliminating as many middlemen as possible from digital currency transactions. So far, the introduction of crypto-backed debit cards has been pioneered by companies such as TenX and Monaco and it has changed several new users’ perspective about how easy to access digital currencies for everyday use.

More Attempts to Bring E-Commerce to World’s Two Billion Unbanked

Both Monaco and TenX make crypto spending easier for customers by offering a multi-currency debit card. Instead of a Bitcoin debit card, a Dash debit card, and so forth, both Monaco and TenX allow users to deposit various cryptocurrencies and access them with one single debit card. When it comes time to make a purchase, the <Read More>

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Why Millennials Keep Bitcoin for Rainy Days

Bitcoin has a huge appeal to millennials who dream of a cashless future, and now they’re putting savings into Bitcoin rather than traditional funds.

The digital currency has already turned early adopters into millionaires, been marketed by Ashton Kutcher and Paris Hilton, and stands for everything that millennials are jaded about in terms of traditional markets and investments, which is exactly millennials keep bitcoin for rainy days.

Getting Involved in a Bitcoin Club

Joining a bitcoin club is the easiest way to begin creating wealth. With as little as a few hundred dollars, you can be on your way taking control over your financial future and create substantial wealth. <Learn More>

Foundations of old finance shaken

While those who are using and involved in Bitcoin still make up less than a percent of the population, there’s a growing number of young people in the millennial generation who are turning away from traditional financial empires.

If this trend continues, it could spell the eventual end of the banker, as they go the same way as the travel agent and the library.

Roshaan Khan, a 20-year-old senior at Virginia Commonwealth University, is one of those millennials. Khan recently invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum — another form of cryptocurrency — and is encouraging his friends to do the same.

“All of my net worth is in cryptocurrencies, because I see them as the best way to escalate my ability to be financially secure and pay off my student loans,” Khan said. “I like the idea of decentralization, the fact that there’s a lot less corruption and political ties. That idea appeals to me … Not having to go through banks. Having financial control over our lives again.”

No bankers go to jail

Andreas M. Antonopoulos, the author of Mastering Bitcoin and The Internet of Money, is familiar with this mistrust. The idea of Internet money makes sense in today’s world and appeals to the new generation, but more than that, it is a system that has not betrayed millennials. <Read More>