The Basement Drops Another Floor

Just a few weeks ago we thought that a $500 bitcoin floor was the bottom of the barrel, but bitcoin has dipped even further, reaching a new low, down in the 400’s. This week bitcoin took a long fall down to $410.61 from $450.68.

Bitcoin Tracker | Week 42

Just a few weeks ago we thought that a $500 bitcoin floor was the bottom of the barrel, but bitcoin has dipped even further, reaching a new low, down in the 400’s. This week bitcoin took a long fall down to $410.61 from $450.68 PYMNTS.com Bitcoin Price index. That’s about a $1,100 drop from its peak price in December of 2013. One speculation for this drop is because of asset allocation, there have been a lot better places to invest more recently – which is great news for the more “traditional” investors who follow the S&P and Dow. Overall, we think the general public should be pleased with this news.

Both PayPal and Square are now set up to accept bitcoin, and Ripple is touting its protocol as a way for banks to move money, faster, and at a lower cost.

The Bitcoin Sentiment Index moved up a half a percentage point to 92.26 from 91.86. Perhaps on the hopes that Tim Draper is right, that bitcoin will hit $10,000 in three years.

As always, if you have any news you’d like to share, please send it our way at contactus@pymnts.com.

On the Plus Side…

Ripple Labs made a ripple in the cryptocurrency community by signing two U.S. banks that will use the platform to transfer money with a concept very similar to bitcoin. PayPal made another bitcoin related announcement, now digital goods merchants can accept bitcoin through a simple integration into the PayPal Payments Hub.

  • September 25, 2014 – Payment network Ripple Labs moved the U.S. banks closer to frictionless payments by signing CBW Bank and Cross River Bank on to the Ripple platform, which uses XRP – an idea similar to bitcoin to transfer money.
  • September 25, 2014 – The executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation, Jon Matonis, believes that the US Marshals Service auction of 30,000 bitcoins proves that bitcoin possesses “market-based legitimacy”.
  • September 25, 2014 – Investor John Divine believes that the bitcoin-PayPal integration is utterly meaningless for investors that are making decisions to invest in bitcoin and believes that investors should wait for adoption to pick up before considering bitcoin as a solid long-term investment.
  • September 25, 2014 – Atlas ATS announced the introduction of a “Price Lock Guarantee” feature allowing clients the ability to lock in a quoted price for up to 60 seconds without having to execute the price right away.
  • September 24, 2014 – PayPal has merchants that are starting to take bitcoin, through payment processors: BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin.
  • September 24, 2014 – Investor Tim Draper believes that bitcoin will still reach $10,000 in three years.
  • September 24, 2014 – The Japanese payments gateway, GMO Internet, announced that it will allow GMO’s 48,532 merchants to accept bitcoin by the end of the eyar.
  • September 24, 2014 – Bitcoin historical trading suggests that a breakout is coming.
  • September 23, 2014 – Bitcoin is gaining legislative weight in Europe. Spain ruled that bitcoin would be classified as an electronic payment system like PayPal.
  • September 22, 2014 – Square is building a register that will take both bitcoin and Apple Pay.
  • September 22, 2014 – The WSJ asks if investing in bitcoin is now worth it and some investors (those that can handle volatility) think it might be time to take a look.
  • September 22, 2014 – The first bitcoin fund launched, named Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Fund (GABI).

On the Dark Side …

There are more examples of scammers taking advantage of the public’s excitement and interest in bitcoin, this time in Missouri and Texas. The Feds have stepped in to shut down the Missouri-based Butterfly Labs. Now, the Swiss are looking into how people are paying for intelligence information with bitcoin abroad. They’ve come across documents on how bitcoin can be used to pay for foreign services without generating evidence that the transaction could be followed.

  • September 25, 2014 – The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) convinced a federal court to shut down Missouri-based Bitcoin company called Butterfly Labs. According to the complaint, the company charged consumers thousands of dollars for its bitcoin computers but failed to provide the computers until they were practically useless, if at all.
  • September 25, 2014 – A Forbes article points out that when it comes to new investments, the good promoters normally sit on the sidelines to wait until things shake out while bad promoters jump right in. An example has been seen in the recent judgment against Tendon Shavers and his Bitcoin Savings & Trust where Shavers defrauded people out of more than 700,000 bitcoins.
  • September 25, 2014 – Swiss Intelligence Services are looking into the possibility of the bitcoin being used to pay for intelligence sources abroad.
  • September 22, 2014 – Four MIT students are fighting off the New Jersey state authorities in court, because the authorities are demanding the source code for their bitcoin mining tool, Tidbit.