Cryptocurrency reference service MapOfCoins announced February 20 the launch of its Technologies tool aiming to give insight into the inner workings of the most popular currencies in the cryptospace.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
MapOfCoins Unleashes Technologies Library for 800+ Cryptocurrencies to ‘Facilitate Digital Learning’
Cryptocurrency reference service MapOfCoins announced February 20 the launch of its Technologies tool aiming to give insight into the inner workings of the most popular currencies in the cryptospace.
Former Goldman Sachs Director Launches Bitcoin Derivatives Brokerage Crypto Facilities
Crypto Facilities Ltd., a London-based broker founded by former Goldman Sachs Executive Director Timo Schlaefer, has announced the launch of its bitcoin derivatives trading platform.
In financial jargon, a derivative is a contract that derives its value from the performance of an underlying entity, in this case the exchange value of bitcoin. Crypto Facilities trades financial products such as bitcoin options and futures, allowing users to “go long” and bet that the price of bitcoin will rise, or “go short” and bet the price will fall. The first derivative offered by Crypto Facilities is a forward contract – a contract to buy or to sell an asset at a specified future time at a price agreed upon today – on the U.S. dollar price of bitcoin. The forward contract serves to hedge against bitcoin volatility, or to benefit from future swings in the bitcoin price.
The forward contract comes with different maturity months, and traders can choose from the nearest three in the March, June, September and December cycle. Once a forward reaches maturity, it will be settled automatically. Traders do not have to wait until maturity to get out of their position, but can trade out at any time. Buying one forward – the minimum trading unit – requires a minimum deposit of 0.50 bitcoin. To sell short one forward, the minimum deposit is 0.25 bitcoin.
As of this morning, one forward at September 15 was trading at USD $242, while the current Crypto Facilities Instantaneous Bitcoin Price Index (CF-BPI) was USD $236. The CF-BPI is calculated continuously based on the current best bid and ask prices observed on major bitcoin exchanges.
“Our forward is probably the simplest and most effective tool out there to protect yourself against bitcoin volatility,” said Crypto Facilities Co-Founder and COO Jean-Christophe Laruelle. “If you want to lock in the value of one bitcoin, you sell one forward.
Forward contracts are traded between investors on the platform developed and managed by the brokerage, which matches sellers with buyers without acting as a central counterparty and takes a commission on all trades based on the official fee schedule. The brokerage, targeted at institutional investors and expert individual investors used to trading derivatives and futures, operates in bitcoin.
Crypto Facilities, which employs a team of qualified financial experts, was founded by Laruelle, a former Senior Trading Architecture Designer at BNP Paribas/Société Générale and Schlaefer, a former Executive Director in Credit Quantitative Modelling at Goldman Sachs who holds a doctorate in financial engineering.
The firm, registered with the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as an appointed representative for broking exchange-traded futures and options, adheres to strict compliance and security standards and holds bitcoin deposits in cold storage on offline, encrypted servers.
The availability of mature financial products such as Crypto Facilities derivatives shows that Bitcoin is taken more and more seriously by the financial establishment and that – like or not – the Bitcoin space is becoming more professional and mainstream.
“The Bitcoin space still lacks professional, reliable marketplaces, and this is what we provide,” Schlaefer said. “We apply the same standards in terms of risk management, compliance and reporting as you would see in the traditional finance space.” He added that the firm has a number of additional financial products in the pipeline and plans to expand its range of services.
Schlaefer told CNBC that he saw real potential in the technology behind Bitcoin – the blockchain – which is a publicly-distributed ledger system that makes sure all transactions are verified in a transparent, decentralized and secure fashion. The CNBC article observes that, like Schlaefer, the Bank of England has also said it sees huge potential for the technology behind Bitcoin.
In a recent paper titled “One Bank Research Agenda,” the central bank said that Bitcoin could reshape the financial industry. A section of the paper (Page 31), dedicated to a Fedcoin-like scenario where central banks might issue digital currencies such as Bitcoin, notes that both the technology and financial sectors need to be engaged, as each brings important and distinct expertise.
“Creating such a system would entail creating a protocol for value transfer over the Internet, akin to what Berners-Lee did for information,” the Bank of England paper says.
London's RE/MAX Accepting Bitcoin for Rent, Global Parent Company Considering 'Options'
The Real Estate Giant RE/MAX's London division has announced a pilot program in conjunction with GoCoin to begin accepting Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin for rent payments.
Join the CT Community, Win 3BTC or Even Become a Millionaire with Fairproof, DarkNote and BetVIP
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The World's ‘Most Secure’ Operating System Adds a Bitcoin Wallet
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FEB 26 DIGEST: London Real Estate Giant Accepts Bitcoin, Revised BitLicense Gets 30 More Days
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Bank of England Sees Future in Bitcoin, Sharia and ‘Considerable Promise’ of Blockchain
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3 Ways to Turn Bitcoins Into Gift Cards
If only everything were available for purchase in Bitcoin. Oh, wait, it is.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
CNN’s Morgan Spurlock Spends Week “Living on Bitcoin”
Morgan Spurlock, Academy Award nominated director of “Super Size Me,” is CNN television’s “Inside Man.” In 2014, he spent a week living on bitcoin. The resulting “Inside Man” episode aired on February 19, 2015, affording a large television audience an in-depth Bitcoin experience that was no doubt a first for many viewers.
The episode begins with a brief explanation of Bitcoin founder Satoshi’s goals, as defined by the white paper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.
“[Satoshi] wanted to create a global currency that existed outside of a central bank or government,” Spurlock explains.
Starting at the Bitcoin Center in New York City, Spurlock buys his first bitcoin from the live auctioneer at the site. He then proceeds to make his first bitcoin purchase, a slice of pizza and a bottle of water. He buys groceries and later, a massage.
Morgan interviews Dan Kaminsky, a white hat hacker (ethical hacker) and Chief Scientist of White Ops Inc, about the average consumer’s number-one concern: whether or not Bitcoin is safe. Dan explains how, when he first heard about Bitcoin, he was quoted as saying: “This is going to fall immediately.”
Dan continues to explain how, like many of us, he was wrong. That although some businesses plugged into the network may have failed, Bitcoin, the core, is solid.
What Spurlock does not mention here is the open source nature of the core. Bitcoin is available for any and all to view the source code, and exactly how it works– if you understand it.
Bitcoin’s open source nature is one of the key reasons why it is a trusted system. If it had been released as closed source software, with limited transparency, there would have been far more distrust in the system. Bitcoin’s open source nature has allowed for global reading, understanding and inclusion.
The open source nature not only allows anyone to read the code, but it also allows anyone, worldwide, to contribute (via GitHub) additional changes to the core. This contribution does go through a rigorous testing and approval phase, and it allows for continual strengthening of the system’s reliability.
After making his purchases, Morgan visits a Bitcoin mining facility.
Viewers here should be aware that although the blockchain discussion in this segment is excellent, the Blockchain.info on screen is not the actual blockchain, but a third-party business that performs a variety of bitcoin-related services, one of which is watching the blockchain and reporting information for users of the site.
The blockchain can be viewed via a variety of other third party businesses, and is not limited to Blockchain.info.
Notably, the blockchain is not “stored on the Internet” as Spurlock reports. The blockchain is stored by people who provide bitcoin nodes. These are the individuals (or mining businesses) who hold full copies of the blockchain.
If the Internet went down tomorrow, the blockchain would still exist, and would simply be waiting to be used.
Spurlock goes on to try to pay his utility bills with bitcoin, make a purchase on the internet, and discuss the future stability of bitcoin compared with fiat currencies. He winds the broadcast up with a conversation with U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who called for a ban on bitcoin in early 2014. Manchin mistakenly states that Bitcoin “ … has been banned in two different countries – Thailand and China – and South Korea stated that it will not recognize bitcoin as a legitimate currency.”
Bitcoin is actually thriving very well in South Korea, and there are no signs that it will not continue to do so.
Realising that Bitcoin adoption depends on each individual’s ability to teach others the merits of digital currency, Spurlock ends his show by convincing a coffee shop to accept bitcoin, and walking the shop owner through the process.
Spurlock’s final interview, with tech entrepreneur Andreas Antonopoulos, lifts the curtain on the future of Bitcoin.
Antonopoulos explains how Bitcoin investment (at that time, summer 2014) has experienced more growth than the Internet had in its dotcom boom period. Antonopoulos goes so far as to label digital currency as the “third wave” of Internet growth (dotcom was the first, social media was the second).
“It takes time, and for more regular people to be seen using bitcoin for legitimate activities,” Antonopoulos comments.
Whether you have been involved in the sector for years, are new to the ecosystem, or want to explain the subject to someone you know, this video does a very good job and is highly recommended. But keep in mind that this documentary was made more than eight months ago, and that is a long time in the Bitcoin world.
Android-based Apple Pay Competitor Will Support Bitcoin
A new secure mobile payment solution for Android will be showcased at the Mobile World Congress, March 2 – 5 in Barcelona, Spain. The new payment app developed by Rivetz and other partners – an Android alternative to Apple Pay with Bitcoin support – will be available in the second quarter of 2015 and is compatible with over 350 million existing Android devices, including Samsung smartphones. Demonstrations on a Samsung Galaxy 4 smartphone will be held daily at the Samsung partner booth (Hall 8.1), Trustonic booth (Hall 7, Stand 7G81), and at the Intercede booth (Hall 7, Stand 7B81).
“We are very pleased to be combining trusted computing technology with the innovations in Bitcoin and blockchain technology to offer consumers the most secure bitcoin payments,” Rivetz CEO Steven Sprague told Bitcoin Magazine. “For consumers, the killer app is having money on the phone, and for the merchants, the built-in security of the system will make it easier to persuade them to accept bitcoin.
Rivetz developed this application over the last year, integrating the contributions of the partners and using the Trustonic Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) as an operating system for the application. “Our solution reflects the latest specifications for mobile payment technology by Global Platform and Trusted Computing Group,” he said.
With Apple Pay, announced at the iPhone 6 launch event last September, Apple wants to grab a big slice of the exploding – and potentially very profitable – mobile payments market. Apple Pay is compatible with a wide range of point-of-sale payment solutions used by merchants, including the terminals provided by the major credit card companies, but requires an Apple device (iPad, iPhone 5 or higher) on the consumer side. That is an important limit since only 12 percent of smartphones in use are made by Apple, and most are older iPhones that don’t support Apple Pay.
Google is not watching idly – it recently acquired Softcard technology to power its payment solution Google Wallet — and established agreements with Verizon, ATT and T-Mobile to pre-install Google Wallet on the smartphones sold by the carriers. Google Wallet is available for Android smartphones, which have an 85 percent market share. (Note, however, that not all Android devices support Google Wallet at this time.)
Besides smartphones, both Apple Pay and Google Wallet will also run on next-generation smart personal devices, such as connected watches, which will add to their appeal and ease of use. But Apple Pay and Google Wallet don’t support Bitcoin, which is an important limitation for the fast-growing community of Bitcoin users, consumers and merchants alike. The new Android payment solution, developed by Rivetz, Trustonic, Intercede and Bitcoin payment processors Coinapult and BitPay, supports bitcoin payments and can be integrated with bitcoin wallets.
“Rivetz is delivering state-of-the-art support that will help Bitcoin [become] a standard, secure capability on every handset,” said Tony Gallippi, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of BitPay. “We look forward to enabling the Rivetz capability as an option for millions of Bitcoin users.”
The new open-source payments technology is easy to use and compatible with any Trustonic-enabled smart device. The solution is compatible with many thousands of Bitcoin merchants, offering consumers peace of mind that their Bitcoin transactions are safe, private and secure. Furthermore, the new solution meets all of the requirements of the recently implemented regulations for European payments using smart devices, which opens the way for deployment in Europe.
The new solution developed by Rivetz uses Trustonic’s Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) built into millions of smart devices to store and process Bitcoin private keys, and Trusted User Interface (TUI) technology for secure PIN entry and secure display of the users’ transaction details. Rivetz provides a software developer toolkit for secure TEE-enabled Bitcoin payment apps.
“We are pleased to be working with Rivetz to bring state-of-the-art security and ease of use to consumers,” said Trustonic CEO Ben Cade. “The Rivetz team is offering a great model for any app developer to leverage the advanced security that Trustonic TEE provides.”
Intercede’s MyTAM cloud service is used to protect the user’s bitcoin wallet and data from malware and any threats that may be present on the handset.
“Apps used for executing Bitcoin transactions are an attractive target for hackers, who are developing increasingly advanced methods to deploy their malware onto Android handsets,” said Intercede CEO Richard Parris. “By ensuring the activities of apps are kept separate and secure from the main OS, end users can be assured their Bitcoin transactions are protected.”
This development is important for the Bitcoin ecosystem, because it integrates bitcoin payments in a comprehensive, secure mobile payment solution that is technically as advanced – or more advanced – than competitors Apple Pay and Google Wallet, supported by leading smartphone manufacturers, and fully compliant with applicable regulations. It will facilitate Bitcoin adoption among consumers and merchants, reduce regulatory obstacles and bring Bitcoin closer to mainstream.
BitGO Secures First Ever Comprehensive Bitcoin Theft Insurance for up to $250,000
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Dapps Partner Sam Yilmaz: Hard Times Ahead for Bitcoin as Interest in Crypto ‘Shrinking’
Decentralized Applications Fund general partner, Sam Yilmaz, warns that the crypto sector is approaching a lean period of lower interest and investment.
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