Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Guide

Bitcoiners Demand Greater Transparency In Exchanges

Many in the Bitcoin community are beginning to demand “proof-of-reserve” from their exchanges and financial services in the aftermath of MtGox ceasing withdrawals and committing some of the worst public relations the community has ever seen (and that says a lot considering Bitcoin’s history in the dark-net). In fact, Bitcoinity is offering free advertising space to the first exchange that implements a way to prove that customer funds are secure, without divulging sensitive information. There are some ideas of how to do this, with a strong consensus that it would be an asset to the community by providing greater trust levels; preventing future panics like we have seen in the last few weeks.

Combating “Fractional Reserve”

Fractional reserve is the method by which banks only keep a percentage of customer’s money on hand, and invest or loan out the rest in various ventures. Many Bitcoin users became interested in Bitcoin in order to avoid exactly this, as it gives the financial institution like crypto signal group an undeserved amount of power while forcing the customers to absorb all of the risk should the institution fail in its ventures. For examples of why fractional reserve can be destructive, think about the U.S. taxpayers bailing out businesses during the last recession, or during The Great Depression when the bank-run resulted in banks ceasing all operation for a short time.

The idea of transparent reserves is not entirely new, as Coinkite already provides a measure of this. Coinkite is not an exchange, but still felt it necessary to provide this level of transparency to its customers well before the latest MtGox saga. With Coinkite, you can view your own account audit report and confirm it against the blockchain. I asked Coinkite founder Rodolfo Novak why they felt it was necessary to go to such lengths to provide transparency and he had this to say;

We believe in Bitcoin done on the Bitcoin way with that in mind we designed our system to be BIP 32 HD from day one. All funds are segregated and allocated to user’s own private keys. All transactions are Blockchain transactions. This is the opposite of fractional reserve and the opposite of how many other wallets and bitcoin business run. It was a huge challenge, we had to write our own interface to the blockchain and create secure means to store it, that was done with the creation of our own HSM.

This was an exercise to build the wallet we wanted for ourselves. What makes Coinkite system work is the fact that it is all taking place on the blockchain, the public ledger that makes Bitcoin work. Considering exchanges may process millions of micro-trades every day, this system would prove to be very cumbersome for them to implement. Verifying Funds Off The Blockchain Github users like Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell) are already trying to come up with ways to confirm account funds off of the blockchain, but without publishing information that could be used to attack the exchange or users. You can read his ideas as collected by “iwilcox”. Essentially, you would need a series of nodes that know where the exchange’s storage is on the blockchain, and would have access to individual account balances. The nodes would be layered in such a way that they could confirm that one user’s funds are included in storage, but not have access to the number of total accounts or anyone else’s balance. As long as the node system is operated in a trustworthy way, the Bitcoin system could trust that an exchange is operating honestly.

Background

After MtGox halted withdrawals, blaming ”a flaw in the bitcoin software,” many customers demanded reassurance from the company that their funds were still protected. Bitstamp, a Europe-based exchange explicitly stated in its press release that “no funds have been lost and no funds are at risk. ” No such statement was given by MtGox, and when the WSJ asked CEO Mark Karpeles about the companies solvency, he responded by saying that the matter was confidential. This instilled no confidence in the Bitcoin community, leading some to panic over MtGox’s potential insolvency, and others to discuss ways exchanges could provide evidence that they possess enough funds to handle massive withdrawals.

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Bitcoin Trading

Cryptocurrency Trading News Bitcoin Weakened Darkcoin Peercoin Booming

ForexMinute.com – Soon after the CTS’s announcement of cutting its ties with Isle of Man’s Bitcoin businesses, the coin’s market has faced a sudden hit. In last 24 hours, Bitcoin has turned out to be one of the biggest failures, if compared to its counterparts. The charts are visibly bearish and are showing no signs of improvement for now.

On the other hand, we have Darkcoin and Peercoin which are continuing to decorate cryptocurrency markets with their attractive rises in last 24 hours. While the optimism in Darkcoin market is credited to their decision to open source Darksend, Peercoin is waiting to launch their much much-awaited (and delayed) Peershares project NuBits. Meanwhile, Darkcoin is also launching RC5 just a day short of NuBits launch.

Meanwhile, the hype surrounding the AuxPoW switch is finally fading off for Dogecoin. The meme-based cryptocurrency, which jumped massively around the switching with Litecoin blockchain, continues to lose steam in its consecutive 24 hours. It might be because of the ongoing discussions on various social media platforms, conceptualizing whether Litecoin is overshadowing Dogecoin after the merge or not. Incidentally, Litecoin’s own hash rate has crossed 1 TH/s right after the merge.

Here is the full report:

BTC/USD

The BTC/USD charts were already on downside and the news from Isle of Man further acted as a catalyst for the top digital currency. In last 24 hours alone, the BTC/USD has fallen more than 2%, definitely the lowest this month. The signals were already bearish during the 9/16 trading sessions when the pair closed after facing a notable fall. (Opened at 474 and closed at 465).

But like every time, the trend is likely to reverse, probably when investors will try to buy the coin at low. We are hoping it might happen when the BTC/USD reaches the bottom of 450. Thereupon, a slight swift is expected. None the least, the arrival of Apple’s very own digital payment system might pose as a competition to Bitcoin in future. Further reviews will clear this doubt.

At press time, the BTC/USD is valued at 463.11.

LTC/BTC

Unlike Bitcoin, the Litecoin charts have reversed from the downtrend it has been facing from days. The Litecoin’s hash rate reaching new milestone might have added few fragments of optimism on the market. As a result, the LTC/BTC is improving magnificently from last 24 hours and has surged more than 2.5% within the same span.

The pair started to trade at 0.01088110 during 9/16 trading hours. It thereupon remained in a tight trading range (between 0.01087650 and 0.01078660), especially ahead of the noon trading hours. The pair later hinted a bullish behavior, and moved upwards right before the closing session. There indeed have been some investment to support Litecoin from falling; the growing volume from China suggests.

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Bitcoin

Sell Bitcoin With Zero Fees

Buying and selling Bitcoin can be expensive if you do it wrong. Coinbase if you exchange through its wallet for example will cost you around 4% in charges. However if you use their exchange GDAX its pretty much free, they are that close that opening your account in Coinbase you don’t even need to create one in GDAX because it’s exactly the same.

What you do have to be careful is on the exchange where it asks for the values because it isn’t talking about the value of your money or Bitcoin but the rounded amount. For example if you were selling 0.5 Bitcoin you may think you need to put the value of half the Bitcoin. In reality its the whole amount as the trading is based on rounded numbers. It may sound confusing which is why I recommend watching the video and anything that doesn’t make sense please feel free to leave a comment and I will walk you through it.

The most interesting thing about putting the money through GDAX instead of using the very simple wallet function is that there doesn’t seem to be anything that flags up that your Coinbase account is used on GDAX. Because I am sure if it had there would be a lot more people transacting directly through the exchange.

As on the exchange you are finding a buyer for either your FIAT currency or your Bitcoin. This means it’s actually a market transaction rather than a wallet transfer which makes a huge difference. As 4% doesn’t sound a lot but it is a lot of money that you didn’t even need to pay. Also once on the GDAX exchange you can transfer between lots of different coins giving you access to not only LTC,ETH,BTC but every other coin on the exchange that you can transact with your FIAT currency.

Main thing is taking your time and make sure you get the first transactions correct. Once you get the hang of how to use the exchange and pushing your funds out of FIAT and into Crypto or back to your bank account you will find it extremely easy and routine. It certainly makes life a lot easier for getting money back and forth between the Crypto Space and the real world.

Another important aspect of this is making sure you setup the banking properly. I use SEPA which takes upto 4 days to transfer money in or out of Crypto but pretty much has zero fees. You will need to provide ID such as a passport and validate an address for security reasons. Also please be aware there could be tax implications long-term if not declared. As obviously it is heading to your bank account on a regular basis and may be questioned as to where it is coming from. I am also aware that Coinbase has been approached by the IRS in the United States wanting access to its accounts for this very reason. However it is one of the main solutions currently being used as a bridge between Crypto and FIAT. There are new options becoming available such as TENX, BonPay and others if remaining anonymous is important. I have my BitPay card arriving next week so will be reviewing it soon.

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