Topic: BITCOIN NEWS EVRYDAY! From multiple sources. - page 26. (Read 51272 times)

Watch Bitstamp, BTC-e and Mt. Gox Prices in Real-Time on CoinDesk
CoinDesk (@coindesk) | Published on February 21, 2014 at 16:37 GMT | Exchanges, News

new-price-tool
We have updated our bitcoin price data page so you can now not only track the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index in real-time, but you can also check out the up-to-the-minute prices from the world’s largest exchanges: Bitstamp, BTC-e and even Mt. Gox.

While exchanges have come and gone from the CoinDesk BPI over time, we understand a single average doesn’t suit everyone. Once on the price page, just check the boxes of the exchanges you want to view, click ‘Update Chart’ and data from the relevant exchanges will appear on the graph.



updated-coindesk-price-page

At the moment, you can view individual prices from Bitstamp, BTC-e and Mt. Gox, but we plan to add more exchanges in the future.

When you hover your cursor over the chart, a box will appear detailing the price on each exchange at that particular time/on that particular date.

The graph enables you to view price data from any period in bitcoin’s history since July 2010, when the price on Mt. Gox was a mere $0.07. You can also see when the CoinDesk BPI came into effect (1st July, 2013) and when the price on Gox plummeted way below that recorded on the other exchanges and the CoinDesk BPI (earlier this month).



gox-falls-below-bpi
The bitcoin price on Mt. Gox fell below that on Bitstamp, BTC-e and the Coindesk BPI earlier this month.
If you want to download the price data you are looking at, just hit the yellow ‘Export’ button and you can select your preferred format from the drop-down list, for example a PNG image or a PDF document.

Make sure you check out our Bitcoin Price Ticker Widget too. We welcome any feedback you have in the comments, or feel free to email [email protected].

My toughs: Wow, this is rely cool. Well done CoinDesk

Top UK Payments Body Weighs in on Bitcoin’s Future
Joon Ian Wong (@joonian) | Published on February 21, 2014 at 10:00 GMT | Europe, News, Regulation

The Payments Council, the organisation that sets strategy for payment mechanisms in the UK, has issued a statement saying that it is “neutral” on bitcoin, though it sees “opportunities” for digital currencies.

In response to questions from CoinDesk, the Payments Council said that it had been tracking the progress of digital currencies “with interest”, and that bitcoin was one of many “competitive offerings” that are emerging in the UK.

The organisation appeared to be relatively positive on the future of digital currencies:

“As shopping habits are increasingly moving across borders and continents, it seems certain that there will be real opportunities for virtual currency providers who are outside of traditional domestic banking systems.”

The council’s statement also noted that digital currencies, like other payment services, would be driven by consumer demand.

The council appeared to be using the terms ‘digital currency’ and ‘virtual currency’ interchangeably in its statement. CoinDesk refers to bitcoin as a ‘digital currency’.

About the council

The Payments Council is the governing body for UK payments systems and services. As such, its task is to lead the development of future payment systems and regulate the accountability and transparency of existing systems. It is a voluntary organisation with a membership comprising banks and building societies, including HSBC, Nationwide Building Society, Citibank and others.

Among the schemes that the Payment Council operates is the LINK ATM scheme, which ensures cash cards issued by banks, building societies and other institutions can be used across different ATMs. Almost all of the UK’s ATMs are connected to the LINK network.

The council sets rules on the security of transactions, customer data and fees charged.

Common interests

The council has an interest in promoting speedier Internet transactions. Under the Faster Payments Scheme, launched in 2008, Internet and phone payments for individuals and businesses in the UK saw transaction times reduced from three working days to several hours.

The system was designed to allow quick transactions for amounts of less than £100,000 (US$166,680).

The council is now working on a UK-wide mobile payments scheme that will allow consumers to send secure payments to mobile phone numbers instead of a bank account number. The council promises that this process will be “as easy as texting”. Some 90% of UK current accounts will be able to do this when the scheme is launched this spring.

Mt. Gox Bitcoin Price Falls Below $100, its Lowest Level Since July
Pete Rizzo (@pete_rizzo_) | Published on February 21, 2014 at 04:15 GMT | Exchanges, Mt. Gox, Prices

The price of bitcoin on Mt. Gox dropped below $100, hitting a low of $91.50 on 20th February.

Data from Bitcoincharts indicates it was the lowest total observed on the exchange since 22nd July when the lowest price was $89.80.

The announcement comes amid increasing criticism from the bitcoin community about the exchange and its questionable behavior that has included ignoring protestors, blaming the Bitcoin protocol for its implementation issues and somehow managing to create an aura of suspicion and uncertainty around even its physical address.

Earlier this week, Blockchain.info chief security officer Andreas Antonopoulos went so far as to label Mt. Gox “clownish” and “incompetent” as part of the latest episode of the popular podcast Let’s Talk Bitcoin, which was dedicated to dissecting problems at the exchange.

The developments are just the latest in a string of setbacks that have spawned community outrage at both the exchange and CEO Mark Karpeles in the last few weeks. Some community members have even called for Karpeles resignation from the Bitcoin Foundation in light of the recent developments, though the organization has not yet weighed in on the gathered petitions.

Prices stable elsewhere

At press time, the uncertainty around Mt. Gox and its solvency seemed to be affecting other exchanges, though only marginally.

Prices at both BTC-e and Bitstamp were roughly $400 greater than those at Mt. Gox. The figures are particularly stunning, given the exchange’s reputation for high prices compared to other exchanges.

BTC-e opened at $542 on 20th February and at press time had fallen to $539. Similarly, Bitstamp dropped from a high of $561 to $553 at press time.

Community reaction

News that Mt. Gox had fallen under the $100 mark was quick to arrive on reddit, with many community members debating the right investment strategy as well as the motives of Mt. Gox in the wake of the most recent setback.

Some maintained that the market would soon rebound sharply once the situation was resolved, while others suggested the resulting negativity surrounding the market would push fringe bitcoin users away, perhaps for good.

Screen Shot 2014-02-20 at 10.54.44 PM
However, notably there seemed to be a growing opinion that Mt. Gox’s low bitcoin prices may actually be a better reflection of bitcoin’s value.

Screen Shot 2014-02-20 at 11.15.02 PM

This minority cited that fact that prices were at or near current prices before China’s influence on the market and the swell of optimism that came with bitcoin’s rising prices toward the end of 2013.

My toughs: I think they caused enough problems to bitcoin and they should cut the losses and CLOSE !

Gavin Andresen to Bitcoin Companies: Support Open Source
Danny Bradbury (@dannybradbury) | Published on February 21, 2014 at 04:11 GMT | Bitcoin protocol, News, Technology

Lead developer Gavin Andresen chided the commercial bitcoin community for not getting involved enough in core bitcoin development and testing this week. In a mail to the bitcoin developers list updating the community on some bug fixes in the code, he called companies out for not giving back.

The mail started out serenely enough, as a general update on what the team has done to fix some immediate transaction malleability issues in the reference version of the bitcoin client software. But it had a sting in the tail:

“Testing and code review is, as always, the bottleneck for getting out a release with these changes. We have a chronic problem with people running bitcoin services on top of the core code waiting until there is an ‘official’ release, and then assuming that somebody else has done the hard work of reviewing and testing the changes.”

“YOU SHOULD NOT BE MAKING THAT ASSUMPTION!” he added, arguing that companies calling procedures in the bitcoin software might trigger some unlikely bug.

When a software engineer speaks in all-caps, you can tell that they’re frustrated.

A tough month

It’s been a tough month for the core development team. Mt Gox’s cessation of bitcoin withdrawals, which it blamed on a long-known flaw in a software component used by the bitcoin network, bought to light a range of problems associated with double spending.

While by no means fatal, they were irritating enough for the Bitcoin Foundation to address them in a public statement.

“When a software engineer speaks in all-caps, you can tell that they're frustrated.”

The latest missive highlighted some immediate work that had been done on the bitcoin wallet to change the way that it handled these issues.

They had been low priority, Andresen said, because they were “edge cases”, meaning that they wouldn’t happen in the normal course of operation.

They would only occur if users did unsupported things. In any case, he said, they were fixable using what he described as a “heavy-handed workaround”.

But software engineers generally like things to be nimble, and elegant, and so the team got to work on it. It resulted in three broad fixes, which would help to ‘de-confuse’ wallets that didn’t know whether their coins were spendable or not.

On of the fixed blocked one of the easiest ways to mutate transactions on the bitcoin network, and Andresen said that many big mining pools were already running this patch.

Time to give back?

But the community has to play ball, Andresen said, by helping to test the fixes out, rather than just running services on top of the latest version of the code and hoping that the team had fixed problems for them.

“Or, in other words: do not treat the core development team as if we were a commercial company that sold you a software library,” he wrote. “That is not how open source works; if you are making a profit using the software, you are expected to help develop, debug, test, and review it.”

BitPay, the payment processor that employed core developer Jeff Garzik last May, was quick to respond.

“Every serious bitcoin company should employ a core dev,” said CEO Tony Gallippi. “Jeff has been fantastic and continues to spend most of his time working on bitcoind and the bitcoin core, and much of the upstream developments that BitPay needs to succeed.”

Peter Gray, co-founder of Canadian company Coinkite, which makes an online wallet to support its bitcoin debit card and POS system, explained that his firm uses its own implementation of the bitcoin protocol in custom-built software, and doesn’t rely on the core bitcoin RPC interface that Andresen describes.

Nevertheless, Gray believes Andresen has a point:

“I do think that Gavin is right to complain about these companies which rely so heavily on open source and don’t contribute back,” he said. “My hope is those same companies are supporting the Bitcoin Foundation financially, and the Foundation, in turn should be funding full time programers and testers.”

Responsibility

Should the Bitcoin Foundation be partly responsible to help ensure the health of the core protocol and reference clients, by encouraging input from industry? The Foundation didn’t return CoinDesk’s request for comment, but Garzik did.

“The Bitcoin Foundation itself is somewhat limited by community ethos. Few people want to centralize a large number of key engineers at the Bitcoin Foundation, which then comes into accusations of ‘controlling bitcoin’ rather than simply being one-of-several bitcoin advocacy organizations,” he said.

Wendell Davis, the founder of Mac OS X-based wallet Hive, admitted that his company hasn’t contributed to the bitcoin source tree:

“Gavin is completely correct of course; they are not a vendor and should not be expected to deliver like a vendor.”

He continued to liken bitcoin to Linux. If Red Hat – which profits from the open-source operating system – didn’t contribute both QA and source improvements, Linux would be far less secure, and more buggy.

“That said, speaking from the perspective of a very small company like Hive (which by the way uses bitcoinj rather than bitcoind, which Gavin is responsible for), it is usually a non-trivial matter to thoroughly go about this kind of work, when you already have your hands full enough at your own ‘layer’,” argued Davis.

Perhaps that’s the problem – bitcoin is a startup currency, in the early stages of disrupting an entire economic model. Lots of people are busy trying to build out its commercial infrastructure.

The question is, how many of them have the time or the funding to support the core technical one? And what happens if the pressure continues to fall upon a small cadre of hard-working, largely unpaid developers?

Bitstamp Restores Withdrawals Following Security Scare

Nermin Hajdarbegovic | Published on February 20, 2014 at 21:00 GMT | Bitstamp, Crime, Exchanges, News

Bitstamp is in the process of restoring full services to all accounts following an issue that prompted the bitcoin exchange to disable withdrawals to some users.

The move was a security precaution and the affected accounts have been notified of the problem.

Nejc Kodrič, Bitstamp’s CEO, told CoinDesk that some accounts have already regained withdrawal functionality.

Phishing fears

The decision to halt the withdrawals was made after Bitstamp detected an increased number of phishing attempts over the last few days.

Bitstamp says some clients had reported receiving suspicious emails. The correspondences were examined and were found to contain malware, so Bitstamp then took the ‘better-safe-than-sorry’ approach and temporarily disabled the accounts.

At the time of writing, no Bitstamp user has reported any missing funds. It is possible that the attack was completely unsuccessful, although it is still too early to say with certainty.

Bitstamp believes the attack was targeted at bitcoin users only, and its sole intent was to steal bitcoins.

Warning message

In an email sent to affected clients, the Bitstamp team stressed that the tech team’s response to the phishing attack was a necessary precaution given the risks of the situation, and gave advice on how to deal with any malware.

“As a precaution we have also applied this security measure to your account,” the exchange wrote. “If you have received any emails with suspicious content and have opened links or attachments, we highly recommend that you immediately contact a computer expert.”

Even if you think your computer is clean, it is probably best to play it safe, Bitstamp says:

“If you consider that your system was not affected, we kindly suggest you contact our support staff for further assistance.”

The company added that the decision to disable withdrawals is an inconvenience, but it should be viewed as part of the exchange’s important security measures, which were put in place to safeguard users’ accounts – and their funds.

Attractive targets

The Mt. Gox debacle is still in the news, and other exchanges – including Bitstamp – have also faced related and unrelated problems in recent days.

Last week, Bitstamp was targeted by a massive DDoS attack, along with a few other exchanges. As with the current issue, it was forced to suspend processing bitcoin withdrawals, but it quickly recovered and resumed regular service.

On a more positive note, most exchanges appear to be very resilient to the frequent DDoS and targeted phishing attacks. It comes with the territory, it seems, and it is reassuring to see that most sites spring back to full service in a matter of hours.

My Toughs: Great to here that one of the best (my opinion) btc exchanges resolved all issues and back in businesses. Only gox fuckup remains and we should expect price rise in next few days.

I know but its so confusing , and hard to read evry news. I asked people what think about this. And u can look at poll, most of them want to see this working. I will try and see how its going. If that is not forbidden ?

we already have press board

Thailand Flip Flops on Bitcoin, Suggests Exchanges are Still Illegal

Pete Rizzo (@pete_rizzo_) | Published on February 20, 2014 at 20:34 GMT | Asia, Exchanges, Regulation

Just days after reopening its bitcoin buying and selling services to the general public, Thailand-based bitcoin exchange Bitcoin Co Ltd is once again being threatened by legal uncertainty.

Bitcoin Co Ltd reinstated its services on 15th February, after receiving a letter from its central bank that seemingly suggested it could legally do so.

However, representatives from the Bank of Thailand (BoT) have released new statements suggesting that Bitcoin Co Ltd “interpreted the letter to serve its own interests”, and that it perhaps acted improperly by reinstating its services.

The legality of Thailand’s bitcoin businesses has been in question now since last July 2013, when statements from the BoT in informal hearings caused the exchange to pause operations. The events caused widespread reports that Thailand had banned bitcoin to be issued around the globe.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Bitcoin Co Ltd managing director David Barnes said it has not been sent any messages by the BoT since receiving the letter in question. Further, he suggested he would hold off on taking any action until he received formal notice.

Said Barnes:

“We plan to continue operations as normal.”

Legal dispute

The Bangkok Post indicated that the BoT official it spoke to believes bitcoin exchanges do not fall under Thai law, which would mean that Bitcoin Co Ltd is not eligible to receive the license it needs to conduct business.

The newspaper explained:

“The letter also stated that even though the company allows its customers to trade bitcoins only for baht, it could not prevent customers from exchanging bitcoins for foreign currencies either locally or abroad.”

Given this interpretation, Bitcoin Co Ltd would be indirectly involved with foreign currency exchange under the Thailand Exchange Control Act of 1942, the paper said.

Still, such statements do not seem to reflect Bitcoin Co Ltd’s updated guidance to its community.

Barnes contends that prior to reopening, Bitcoin Co Ltd revised its terms and conditions so that it and its users complied with BoT guidelines.

The updated terms and conditions read:

“The customer must agree never to exchange bitcoins purchased from Bitcoin Co Ltd for any currency other than Thai Baht. The customer must also guarantee that any bitcoins the customer sells to Bitcoin Co Ltd have never been involved in exchange with any currency other than Thai Baht.”

Community reaction

Frankie Bishop, a representative from the Facebook group Bitcoin Thailand, said that he is not surprised that bitcoin continues to operate amid legal uncertainty. Citing the expression ‘this is Thailand’, he said he believes trading will likely continue in spite of the new statements.

Bishop said that the BoT has effective implied that bitcoin “does not fit anywhere”, under current Thai law, and that due to other pressing government matters, is unlikely to further clarify its position.

Explained Bishop:

“Thus, we could conclude that this sits in that area called the ‘Gray Area’.”

My toughs: Everything about Bitcoin is in that "Gray Area" !

What do u mean ? This is post from coindesk .

citation for that article?

Daniel Cawrey (@danielcawrey) | Published on February 20, 2014 at 18:08 GMT | Coinbase, Companies, News, Technology

‘Balanced’ Integrates Bitcoin Payments for 450+ Online Marketplaces

Balanced, a San Francisco-based company that provides a payment API for online marketplaces has today announced plans to integrate bitcoin into its system.

The company’s co-founder and CEO Matin Tamizi told CoinDesk that its marketplaces will benefit, as Balanced takes the payments layer off their hands:

“We create value by having one API and one platform to do that.”

The payment API has begun trialling bitcoin integration with two of its customers: CrowdTilt and Gittip.

Lower fees

Tamizi confirms that the company has partnered with Coinbase to launch the effort. He added: “There’s a 1% fee. We’re just passing on that 1% fee to the marketplaces.”

In effect, Balanced is passing on the 1% fee Coinbase levies to its customers in order to promote bitcoin over credit card transactions, as card fees are much higher. The Balanced website lists these fees at 2.9%+$.30 per transaction.



Credit card fees that Balanced charges.
The credit card fees that Balanced charges.
In turn, the company can offer marketplace customers a good introductory experience with bitcoin. “Coinbase makes it easy for anybody to start using and transacting with bitcoin instantly,” said Adam White, director of business development at Coinbase.

Bitcoin and digital payments

“What we’re trying to do is make it more mainstream by making the experience to purchase with bitcoin as close to established behaviour right now,” said Tamizi.

He believes that QR codes or long bitcoin addresses won’t be the future. Instead, Tamizi thinks something similar to Facebook Connect could be very successful for digital payments.

“You could use Coinbase, or perhaps another wallet in the future as well, to give us OAuth [open standard for authorization] access,” he said.

“You’re not sharing any sensitive information. Just like with Facebook Connect, you can revoke that permission.”

Future prospects

Balanced is only allowing marketplaces to accept bitcoin for now. However, with its escrow funds and payouts capability, there may be more bitcoin features at some point in the future. Tamizi said:

“We have to learn more about the ramifications of paying someone using just a bitcoin address.”

To begin with, the company is experimenting with debit card payouts as an alternative to bank wires, which can be pricey. “The main way that we pay people out is ACH transfers. The other thing we’ve talk about recently is pushing money via debit cards.”

This method uses a person’s debit card number to send money to a bank account – a cheaper option for Balanced than ACH wires. That feature is expected to be available for a limited beta in May.

So, for now Balanced is focused on the payment side of bitcoin. “The bigger need we see more with our customers is being able to accept bitcoin as opposed to just being able to send it out,” Tamizi said.

“But maybe being able to send bitcoin out will help us expand internationally. There’s a lot of potential there. So we’ll see.”

About Balanced

The company describes itself as “Processing. Escrow. Payouts. One API.” for marketplaces and crowdfunding sites. Last year it received $2m in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Currently, it has over 450 website customers.

“I think of bitcoin more of a currency similar to how US dollar of the Euro than an actual payments method. Bitcoin wallets are the actual payment method. So in this case we are giving you the ability to pay from your Coinbase bitcoin wallet.”

Tamizi added that his company still needs to learn the nuances of the relatively new currency. Its initial foray with the Coinbase partnership should be interesting given how nascent it still is for payments.

My toughs: Finally some more good news for BTC ...

Tnx for understanding . Hope u seen that post about free btc, i will reward my readers if we can menage to make use of this thread.

Apologies - relatively new to the forum. Had no intention on messing with the thread and have modified the quote as requested.

NOTE: on 1. March , I will relocate my news to new topic and first 10 readers there will be rewarded with some nice free and shiny BTC .

Also i would like to know what u guys think should i add once or two times per day this info on btc price:

I think coindesk is the best news provider about BTC , but i read them all and if there are some "differences" in news i will point out to that.

Ryan Galt (@twobitidiot) | Published on February 20, 2014 at 13:40 GMT | Analysis, Merchants, News, Wallets

PayPal Likes Digital Currencies?

It’s hard to not get frustrated when everyone starts jumping for joy after a televised interview in which eBay CEO John Donahue told Bloomberg that PayPal is building a digital wallet for multiple cryptocurrencies. Because, of course, it is. The e-payments giant would be silly not to.

Paypal, which is owned by eBay, is the pioneer in digital payments and they already accept over 25 foreign currencies – basically, all of the ones that matter, with the exception of the Chinese RMB.

New digital currencies like bitcoin will likely interact with PayPal’s systems in the same manner as existing fiat currencies – when they are big enough. That’s because, like Coinbase and BitPay, you would expect PayPal to lock-in fiat prices for merchants accepting bitcoin.

They would also be likely to batch transactions ‘off-block chain’ in order to cover transaction risks during the 10-minute confirmation window.

What they said

In the interview, Bloomberg’s Matt Miller told Donahue that he thinks digital payments like bitcoin will rule in the internet commerce of the future and have the potential to make PayPal defunct unless the company starts preparing now.

However, it is absurd to infer that PayPal is useless in the long-term, and neglects the fact that PayPal owns some serious e-commerce real-estate. This is like saying that Amazon, after utterly dominating the book industry, would never be able to move into electronics (or any other category that they have since dominated).

Miller speaks with an irritating certainty about bitcoin. It’s safe to call me a fanatic, but Miller is already in outer space on his way to the moon.

Finally, the idea of the “head start” PayPal would get for spinning off now makes some sense until you consider what he is really saying. This is, that PayPal should essentially spin-off to the highest bidder before it dies an inevitable death. Is Miller suggesting a perverse corporate pump and dump?

Donahue’s no fool. He coolly pointed out there’s nothing that’s holding PayPal back from integrating digital payments today as part of eBay, in fact:

“PayPal is pursuing digital payments and is the leading digital payments alternative in many different environments. So it’s not a matter of eBay holding PayPal back.”

What Donahue is really saying of course is: we will do with bitcoin what we want, when we want to, because we are really, really good at payments.

He doesn’t need to utter the word ‘bitcoin’, because that particular currency would be lower volume for PayPal today than the Russian ruble. Miller is like a dog with a bone though: “Until everyone starts using bitcoin, and then there will be no reason to use PayPal.”

Then Donahue responded with the bombshell:

“[That is just what] PayPal is doing in building a wallet that can hold multiple types of digital currency.”

So, we can assume that, as soon as cryptocurrencies are actually worth PayPal’s time and regulatory uncertainties over the commercial use of cryptocurrencies are removed, the company will integrate them into their system. And will very likely be a force from day one.

It’s really not a matter of if PayPal enters the bitcoin industry, but when and, more importantly, how.

My toughs: This is great news. I was thinking coz of paypal we will never be able to buy with btc on ebay. But looks like we will .

I use this:

http://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/Technology/Top+Internet+Brands/Bitcoin

Look i get that that site is good i am just trying to provide some news directly on this forum. For forum members.
There is no need to point out that site in evry post.
I did check it out and will be active there to.

*Can u pls , unquote that whole article and leave only ur comment. I am trying to keep this thread clean as posible without to much quotes and confusion. Tnx.

As it breaks.

http://newslookup.com/bitcoin/

Epic to hear!

Could have made some coin if you posted that on Cryptsy Report