Feathercoin Emerges as Arbitrage Powerhouse

BitcoinIntel analysts advise cryptocommodity investors to keep their eyes on Feathercoin (FTC) over the next month, as the altcoin has been quietly gaining traction and swelling in value on major exchanges such as BTC-E.com.


While the market rates of crypto-to-USD continue to fluctuate with extreme volatility and are subjected to the whims of global events, market fluctuations between crypto-to-crypto commodities are more predictable, less dramatic, and more profitable within shorter periods of time. Traders and automated arbitrage bots have been observed engaging in frequent trades between cryptocommodities, specifically BTC/LTC/FTC. The sole purpose of flipping crypto-to-crypto in this manner is to increase their physical holdings. Many of these investors see cryptocurrency as having significantly more value than USD, and as a result hedge in altcoins like FTC as opposed to USD.

Small Units, Large Gains

At the time of writing, 1 FTC is priced at .00046 BTC, equivalent to about $0.38USD, according to the BTC-E exchange.

Within the last 30 days, Feathercoin rose to from 0.00040 BTC to 0.00128 BTC on Novemer 30, 2013. Traders who bought in using BTC at 0.00040 on November 27, 2013 saw a 278% ROI if they sold on November 30, 2013. Within the last few days, the market rate has slowly deflated back to the 0.00040 range. The Feathercoin market is anticipated to experience similar spikes and dips over the next few weeks as global events are announced related to Bitcoin and Litecoin. The current dip is being interpreted as parabolic by BitcoinIntel analysts, creating a temporary bear market that can yield significant profits for those with resources to diversify into Feathercoin via BTC-E before the market swings back to the .001+ range. The FTC/BTC fluctuations are available at CryptoCoincharts.info.

“If the value of Bitcoin drops by 500% overnight, it won’t matter to smart investors because they hedged in FTC instead of USD. At the end of the day, they still have cryptocurrency,” stated Alexander Heid, co-founder of BitcoinIntel.com and CEO of HackMiami. “FTC can always be traded for another kind of crypto if needed, or it can be spent on a good or service. The only losers in the cryptocurrency arbitrage game are those who rely exclusively on USD as a safe haven for market fluctuations. If markets don’t move in the anticipated direction, the trader can end up taking a significant hit and be left holding a USD voucher code for an exchange that they now have to figure a way to turn to cash. Keeping trades within the realm of crypto-to-crypto allows for quick and easy withdrawal, eliminates regulatory requirements, and keeps wealth within the cryptocurrency economy and stays true to Agorist principles.”

About Feathercoin

Feathercoin (FTC) was released in April 2013 as an open source fork of the Litecoin (LTC) cryptocurrency project. FTC was added to the BTC-E exchange in May 2013. Feathercoin has emerged to be considered one of the most prominent ‘altcoins’ behind Litecoin, and has a very active development community continuously maintaining the codebase. FTC operates much like LTC because it uses Scrypt as its primary encryption algorithm. However, it is designed to be more lightweight (hence the image of a ‘feather’), less resource intensive, and has the ability process transactions at greater speeds using a smaller blockchain. The Feathercoin concept and code was first developed by Peter Bushnell, who was a minor contributor to the Litecoin project.

About BitcoinIntel.com

BitcoinIntel.com, a subsidiary of HackMiami, is the first customized cryptocurrency intelligence service providing aggregate marketplace information and open source intelligence (OSINT) data sourced from exchanges, mainstream media, alternative news sources, and social networks. The data is presented in a customizable dashboard format, and provides analytics on all aspects the cryptocommodity ecosystem.

The service seeks to assist cryptocurrency miners, traders, and consumers by providing updated marketwatch intelligence that can be used for mining decisions, trade intelligence, and diversification suggestions. BitcoinIntel.com analysts were among the few that accurately predicted the rise of Bitcoin and Litecoin to match or exceed the price of gold and silver.

About HackMiami

HackMiami is the premier start-up incubator and partnership resource in South Florida for information security services such as vulnerability analysis, penetration testing, and digital forensics. HackMiami is also heavily involved within the cryptocurrency marketplace, having participated in the alternative economy since 2011.

HackMiami seeks to develop and harness the participation of the information security community through regular events, presentations, labs and competitions. These events allow the hacker community a forum to present their research, develop new techniques and methodologies, and at the same time provides valuable a networking resource for contracting opportunities.

source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/12/prweb11424537.htm

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/feathercoin-emerges-as-arbitrage-powerhouse/

BTC-e Enables Fund Withdrawals Using MasterCard and Visa Cards

Notoriously tight-lipped bitcoin exchange and CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index member BTC-e is now allowing customers to withdraw funds to Visa and MasterCard debit and credit cards, with some exceptions.


The company blog post, issued on 21st March, indicated that the new program is now available to customers in any country, using any currency. All customers will pay a 5% fee for the service.

The new functionality is noteworthy as it will allow customers to send money to debit and credit cards issued by two of the largest and most commonly used international card issuers. At present, the transfer of funds is only possible in US dollars.

Explained BTC-e:

“If your card is not in USD, the money will be converted at the rate of VISA / MasterCard or your bank’s rate (depending on the agreement with your bank).”

BTC-e estimated that customers will need to wait between two and four days to receive funds. MasterCard’s Maestro debit card, cards issued by PayPal and Visa Electron debit cards are not able to be used in conjunction with the service.

BTC-e did not respond to requests for further information.

Customer feedback

BTC-e conducted customer testing for an unidentified period before enabling the service, and posted answers to three frequently asked questions.

The exchange indicated the transactions will display as “affiliate payment” or “refund affiliate payment” on credit card statements. It added that funds can be sent to cards in any country and that on some cards such transactions would not be possible due to restrictions imposed by banks.

Added BTC-e:

“Some credit cards that do not allow [you] to have a positive balance cannot be funded. If payout to your card is not possible, then we will immediately notify you and refund the money back to your account.”

Renewed activity

The news follows what appears to be an increasingly active period of experimentation from the major exchange in regards to its offerings, notably following the insolvency of its one-time major competitor Mt. Gox.

On 28th February, it cut withdrawal fees via some of its third-party services in a move that increased the ease with which some customers would be able to move funds out of the exchange.

The moves also come in the wake of increasing attention from the mainstream media and warnings from major investors about the exchange’s practices.

source: http://www.coindesk.com/btc-e-to-allow-fund-withdrawals-to-select-visa-and-mastercard-cards/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/btc-e-enables-fund-withdrawals-using-mastercard-and-visa-cards/

Fake China Bitcoin Ban pushes BTC price down

Update: it seems there was a document, saying People’s Bank of China is looking into strengthening regulations.


A ban on Bitcoin is definitely not part of it. The story is still developing, we will keep watching this closely.

Bitcoin price has been dropping significantly since yesterday. Markets were responding worried after being told the People’s Bank of China released a statement in which they stated all Bitcoin transactions should cease after the 15th of April 2014.

Banned by April 15

The People’s Bank of China didn’t hesitate to share its opinion about the virtual currency in the past. In December 2013, it barred financial institutions from handling Bitcoin transactions, moving to regulate the virtual currency after an 89-fold jump in its value sparked a surge of investor interest in the country. This made Bitcoin price take a fall that was over 20%. Bitcoin took a dive below $1000 on most exchanges. A lot of people interpreted this statement as if China was to ban the cryptocurrency altogether. In reality, the People’s Bank of China said “it isn’t a currency with “real meaning” and doesn’t have the same legal status. The public is free to participate in Internet transactions provided they take on the risk themselves.” After clarifying this, dust settled and Bitcoin price became relatively stable again.

With the Mt. Gox saga still going on, nobody would be surprised the People’s Bank of China would make a public statement again. After all, people might have forgotten their previous warning, time for a new one. Last night, a new statement was rumored to be released. Rumored, because there was no foundation whatsoever for this. Nevertheless, people obviously panicked as was reflected in another Bitcoin price drop. The virtual currency was slowly climbing back up towards $650 but took a dive below $600 again.

As for the statement itself, it didn’t look like a warning this time, but more like a definite ban. The People’s Bank of China would have stated that it decided to ban all Bitcoin transactions, effective as of the 15th of April 2014. It’s clear that this isn’t just an every day warning. A ban on Bitcoin transactions causes real panic. So what was actually said? Nothing, it seems…

Hoax

Sina Science and Technology got in touch with a number of representatives of different Chinese Bitcoin trading platforms. The news about the ban supposedly was issued in a document to the exchanges on the 18th of March. This document contained the message that by April 15, at the latest, all Bitcoin transactions are to be stopped. However, no exchange received any form of legal document. They assured that trading is going on, and there’s no intention to stop any services after April 15.

The People’s Bank of China declined to comment on this news, which indicates that this probably was a hoax indeed. So who did throw this message into the world? Maybe somebody who wanted to see a significant drop in Bitcoin prices so he or she could buy in cheap. If so, the strategy worked. Bitcoin is trading at about $570 now, being over $600 only a few hours ago. This kind of manipulation is not what Bitcoin was made for.

You can check the statement and the exchange’s response to it here. It’s in Chinese, so Google Translate is your friend.

Update: it seems there was a document, saying People’s Bank of China is looking into strengthening regulations. A ban on Bitcoin is definitely not part of it. The story is still developing, we will keep watching this closely.

source: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/03/21/fake-china-bitcoin-ban-pushes-btc-price-below-600/

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http://www.guugll.eu/fake-china-bitcoin-ban-pushes-btc-price-down/

Mt gox ‘Discovery’: US Lawyers not convinced.

Mt gox’s announcement, yesterday, that it had ‘Discovered’ an old format wallet containing almost twenty-five percent of the missing bitcoins is being viewed as highly suspect. The bankrupt exchange has found the missing coins at a time when many are paying careful attention to blockchain transactions. Indeed I wrote on this myself on March 9th in an article entitled “$113 Million of missing bitcoins may be moving through blockchain.” Mt gox has announced that they immediately informed the relevant authorities of the substantial recovery, however, one man isn’t quite buying their story.

Chris Dore is a partner at a law firm involved in representing clients in a US class action against the bankrupt exchange. His firm Edelson Law is currently investigating events up to the collapse of Mt gox, and it is Dore’s belief that the announcement is merely an attempt to stem a growing suspicion that these bitcoins were being prepared to be broken into smaller wallets and then further dispersed. He stated: “Their statement that they found (these bitcoins) in a random wallet and failed to tell anyone for two weeks is highly suspect.” He went on to state that it was his belief that these were probably the 180,000 that had been discovered moving through the blockchain on or about the seventh of March. This was reported in Cryptocoinnews on March 9th.


Chris went on to further state: ” We believe that that we were on the right trail. It appears that these 180,000 to 200,000 bitcoins were being tumbled. That they were being broken down and reconstituted so our goal was to find this out.” Dore seems to believe that declaring these funds to be discovered may be a ploy to hold up further investigations into the missing funds. Dore went on to say: “If it’s a coincidence, it’s a $120 Million coincidence. We frankly just don’t buy it.”

Edelson Law yesterday applied to the courts for a relaxation of the restrictions on Mt gox assets in order to make it easier to investigate their transactions and help to seek to ‘discover’ further funds. Dore is quite skeptical about the motives at Mt gox stating that: “they found it in a wallet and they were breaking it down into hundreds of thousands of smaller wallets, it raises a lot of questions about their honesty and whether they are being forthright about what they have.” Dore was unwilling to state exactly how much he knew, but he seemed to believe that it would have been interesting to track the transactions to see where they would finally end up. Interestingly the investors that have lost funds are not currently being treated as creditors within the bankrupcy hearing and Mt gox is attempting to have it’s US assets shielded until the conclusion of it’s bankruptcy hearings in Tokyo. The next court hearing, is scheduled for April 1st in Japan. Let us only hope that the date chosen is not indicative of their attitude towards their clients. This may be a futile hope in an organisation that has treated it’s investors with an attitude of nothing less that open contempt. Cryptocoinnews will keep you appraised of developments.

source: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/03/22/mt-gox-discovery-us-lawyers-convinced/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/mt-gox-discovery-us-lawyers-not-convinced/

MtGox Recovery Initiative

We are a group of people who have lost considerable funds on MtGox, due to Mark Karpeles’s completely irresponsible actions.


We have retained a very good Japanese law firm, which will try to recover as much as possible, and additionally press criminal charges against Mark Karpeles personally. Karpeles was holding customer deposits on his company bank account, which is illegal in Japan.

To gain additional proof and insight into the extent of the criminal acts committed by MtGox and Mark Karpeles, we are building a database of losses. Please fill out the form below to help build our case.

Additionally you can indicate if you would like us to try to get your funds back also. This is no legal commitment at this point, just informational. Once we gain more insight in our ability to do so, we will contact you to inform you of any further possible action.

MTGOX RECOVERY UPDATES

Update #1

Hi Everyone,

This is our first update since we started the website. The response has been overwhelming. Our site http://www.mtgoxrecovery.com now represents over 20% of all MtGox claims and is still growing rapidly. This is great for several reasons, but first I would like to share some more information about who is behind this site.

My name is Olivier Janssens, I recently received some press by taking the first flight paid for with bitcoins(*) I have been an early miner since 2010, and (still) believe Bitcoin is the greatest invention since the Internet. This is the currency of the People, and will allow us to regain much freedom, and enhance our way of doing business together in ways that we have never seen before. Unfortunately, as part of the growth process, some of the rotten apples have to be weeded out. In this case the apple was quite big.

I personally lost over $5 million USD in this debacle, due to Mark Karpeles stating to me personally that large amounts of Bitcoins could be sold on his exchange without any issues. After 3 months of trying to (unsuccessfully) extract my money, I started preparing a lawsuit. This was about three weeks ago, and around the time the first protestor arrived at their office because MtGox had stopped sending Bitcoins under the excuse of the malleability bug.

Mark knew I was a major stake holder in the Bitcoin community, and we discussed solutions for 3 hours to try to resolve this. At that time he kept telling me he could only send me a very limited amount per month, due to anti money laundering issues. Obviously, this was a lie.

MtGox was already insolvent at that time and likely was long before then. Mark had lured me (and many others) into sending over millions worth of Bitcoins so he could continue whatever scam or scheme he was running. However, I decided that I would not take MtGox down with my lawsuit (I was ready to have their bank account blocked and start criminal charges against Karpeles personally).

The reason why I didn’t proceed with that course of action was because I wanted to protect the community from being harmed by taking down its oldest exchange. So I decided to take Mark’s word that he really had anti money laundering issues, and bought back in. In the end I walked away with a mere 20% of my original investment (bitcoinbuilder).

This was a huge loss, but I still have Bitcoins left. There are many people who have lost their entire life savings due to Mark Karpeles’s criminal behaviour. Personally, I do not believe that the coins were leaked through a bug. I believe this scheme has been going for much longer. Mark will be investigated for his potential crimes. He is in Japan and the legal team I have on this case have assured me that he is unable to leave the country due the chapter 11 filing.

This brings us to our progress so far. In the last days we have been working hard on assembling evidence from people who have been ripped-off by Mark in one way or another. Not just by depositing coins on the exchange, but by false promises made by him personally. If you have any such story where you communicated to him personally and where he gave you guarantees, please forward it to contact@mtgoxrecovery.com. Any additional evidence which might help prove that Mark is behind this is very welcome. If you have other evidence that would show something different, please send it to us also. We are making a timeline of events, and a very clear document, and will be communicating this together with any other info we gather to the police.

Meanwhile, we have also started some initiatives like http://www.projectgox.com — an idea that will start a community based bitcoin exchange, where all the people that lost money in MtGox become shareholders and take part in the profits. We think that the Bitcoin community is extremely strong and resilient, and that we look out for each other. This is what makes us strong.

So far I have been funding this whole lawsuit personally, and I do not want to take donations because I think everyone has lost enough. I believe Bitcoin is too important to have something like MtGox kill this valuable community.

We will grow from this and become much stronger than before. Together, we will try to make right what was done wrong, and start initiatives to make people whole again. We will soon reach over 50% of the Plaintiffs, and this will allow us to take control of the former MtGox.

I welcome any ideas on how to monetize this again so we can start making back what we lost. In the next days I will bring forward the best ideas we have received, and then we can all vote on how we wish to move ahead. I do not have much hope on recovering any ‘stolen’ bitcoins, but we will do our very best to investigate this to the fullest extent of the law, to find out exactly what happened, and to bring those responsible to justice.

Regards,

Olivier Janssens

source: http://www.mtgoxrecovery.com/ & http://blog.mtgoxrecovery.com/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/mtgox-recovery-initiative/

MtGox finds 200,000 missing bitcoins in old wallet

Bankrupt Japanese firm MtGox said in a filing that it has found 200,000 lost bitcoins.


The firm said it found the bitcoins — worth around $116m (£70m) — in an old digital wallet from 2011.

That brings the total number of bitcoins the firm lost down to 650,000 from 850,000.

MtGox, formerly the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, filed for bankruptcy in February, after it said it lost thousands of bitcoins to hackers.

“MtGox had certain old-format wallets which were used in the past and which, MtGox thought, no longer held any bitcoins,” said Mt Gox chief executive Mark Karpeles in the filing.

However, “on March 7, 2014, MtGox confirmed that an old-format wallet which was used prior to June 2011 held a balance of approximately 200,000 bitcoins,” he said.

Mr Karpeles said the firm moved the found bitcoins to offline wallets on 14 and 15 March so that they could not be targeted.At the time of the MtGox theft, about 750,000 customer bitcoins were stolen as well as close to 100,000 of MtGox’s own bitcoins.That amounts to about 7% of all the bitcoins in existence.

MtGox recently won brief bankruptcy protection in the US as the firm’s case works its way through Japanese courts.

source: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26677291

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/mtgox-finds-200000-missing-bitcoins-in-old-wallet/

Bitcoin Really Does Represent the Democratization of Money

Bitcoin is commonly regarded as a truly democratic form of money.


Interestingly enough, however, there seem to be various explanations supporting this characterization. Furthermore, at least one of these interpretations have caused some to doubt whether Bitcoin does in fact still represent the democratization of money, or whether it has perhaps become susceptible to less democratic forces throughout the years since its inception. In order to understand why this doubt is understandable yet unjust, it is helpful to recognize which two types of democracy, as distinguished by political theorists such as Cambridge professor John Dunn[1], are often attributed to Bitcoin, and why the most important of the two is still very much intact today.

The first main form of democracy, as set apart by Dunn, is essentially a form of government. Hence, at its core, this type of democracy is ultimately a technical procedure, rather than a political value. This procedure basically encompasses the formation of government through the ritual of elections.

In regard to Bitcoin, this democratic feature is commonly attributed to Satoshi’s proposal for a proof-of-work system, which would function on basis of a “one-CPU-one-vote” mechanism. But as we all know, this democratic feature did not really hold up. Due to the introduction of ASIC-miners and mining-pools, hardly anyone who uses Bitcoin today actually has any vote in this specific procedure at all, while those who do have a major one.

But even though this process of specialization has probably weakened the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin-infrastructure to some degree, the “one-CPU-one-vote” mechanism should hardly be regarded as a fundamental ideal bolstering Bitcoin in the first place. Instead, it primarily reflects one specific function within the protocol: the proof-of-work system. And although that specific function is obviously a fundamental technological innovation, as it helpes to solve the problem of double-spending, it seems to have little to do with ideology.

Moreover, this characterization of “democracy” as “majority vote” is a quite limited interpretation of democracy in the first place. Rather, the ideology of democracy, as developed throughout centuries of work by political philosophers and culminating in both the American and French revolutions of the eighteenth century, consists of various Enlightenment ideals. And this latter version should probably be regarded as the more important of the two types of democracy as distinguished by political theorists such as Dunn. Fortunately, this value is still very present in Bitcoin today.

One of these inherent Enlightenment ideals imbued in both democracy and Bitcoin, is the notion of equality. Fundamentally, this ideal inhabits that all men should enjoy equal rights under the law, and includes issues such as freedom of speech and property rights. This, of course, is very present within the Bitcoin-protocol. As opposed to bank-money, which can be censored at will (as the Wikileaks Banking Blockade has shown the world) it is absolutely not possible to censor payments with Bitcoin, since these payments do not require a middleman, and literally consist of cryptographically protected information – a pure and therefore very equal form of free speech if you will. For similar reasons, arbitrary confiscations of wealth – as seen in Cyprus – are simply out of the question as long as bitcoins are stored securely.

Moreover, the organizational structure behind Bitcoin guarantees an incredibly high level of equality in itself. Fundamentally, no one person has more influence over the protocol than anybody else, nor can anyone bend its rules to his or her own advantage. Not even the inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, or huge stakeholders, such as the Winklevoss twins, are able to change the Bitcoin-code without reaching a consensus among users. Hence, in stark contrast to the immense power financial lobby-groups have exercised over the monetary policy of many nations, or the apparent Too Big To Fail status of modern-day superbanks, each and every Bitcoin-user is truly equal to the network.

A second inherently important principle underpinning modern Western democracy is the ideal of popular sovereignty. The basic tenet of this principle, which dates back to Thomas Hobbes’ social contract, is the legitimization of the rule of law by the consent of the governed.

And regardless of the legitimacy or desirability of this contract regarding present-day nation-states, central banks run their operations with questionable consent at best. Not only are they purposely removed from the democratic political process (in some cases – like the EU – even quite literally), but merely a tiny fraction of the populace understand what these institutions do in the first place.

Moreover, it stands beyond the slightest glimmer of a doubt that private banks do not manage the money-supply by our consent, at all. And yes, they do manage a tremendous amount of our money supply – much more than most people realize. As opposed to the popular misconception, banks don’t actually lend out central bank issued money; not even indirectly, as the money multiplier model suggests. Instead, they actually create money as credit themselves.[2] Yet, private banks are not accountable to the public at all, as the absolute lack of prosecuted bankers in the wake of the financial crisis has clearly shown. To put it bluntly: our current monetary system makes an absolute mockery out of popular sovereignty.

Bitcoin, on the far opposite side of the spectrum, quite literally exists because of the consent of its users; if they did not consent on the rules of the protocol they would not use it in the first place. And this use, in turn, is what makes this currency itself valuable. After all, Bitcoin would be nothing but source code without its users. Indeed, Bitcoin does not even rule by our consent, it effectively exists by our consent.

By extension, unsatisfied Bitcoin-users can simply elect to withdraw their consent, and perhaps bootstrap a new currency. And this has in fact happened a couple of times already, of course. Unsatisfied with Bitcoin’s mining-algorithm, some have left to (at least partially) support Litecoin. Unsatisfied with Bitcoin’s “waste” of energy, some have left to (at least partially) support Peercoin. And unsatisfied with Bitcoin’s community, some have left to (at least partially) support Dogecoin. Many more might withdraw their consent from Bitcoin in the future, only to transfer it to an altcoin they feel does represent them. They can vote with their feet.

Lastly, the third and arguably most important political value underpinning modern Western democracy is the principle of self-governance. And it’s not much of a stretch to argue that the organizational structure of open source programming is, by far, the best way for common people to organize themselves ever invented. Not only is anybody free to contribute to the rules – the code – of the system, this power does not even need to be transferred to anyone else in order to make it work. With Bitcoin, we now for the first time don’t need to delegate a small group of people to govern the rest, but we can instead transfer this power to universally verifiable open source code, written by and for the people. This is a truly revolutionary form of self-government.

Of course, some of the smartest economists alive today have argued that this is actually not a good thing. According to them, money should not be governed by the people at all. They believe that money should be carefully managed by experts in order stabilize the value, for instance, or to guarantee economic prosperity. According to these economists, if the people are supposed to have any say in this regard, it should be a very indirect influence at most.

But guess what. That’s precisely what some of the smartest political thinkers of previous eras – including the likes of Plato, Montesquieu and Hobbes – argued about democracy itself. All of them expected society to end up in a terrible mess if governmental power wasn’t at least partially claimed by some type of autocratic leadership. Indeed, up until the 1800′s, the term “democracy” was actually a fringe word, only perpetuated by the “insouciant and incorrigible dissidents,” as John Dunn put it: “Those who chose to do so placed themselves far beyond the borders of political life, at the outer fringes of the intellectual lives of virtually all of their contemporaries.”

source: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/10724/bitcoin-really-represent-democratization-money/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/bitcoin-really-does-represent-the-democratization-of-money/