Link to live trading on the various Bitcoin markets
Bitcoin Bubble Tracker | Week 3
China has not been kind to Bitcoin this month, starting from the announcement that Bitcoin is not a proper currency in early December. The opinions and rulings continue to roll in from regulatory authorities that warn of the many risks of Bitcoin, practically pleading with their tax payers to avoid major investments. However there are still major risk-takers on the market, willing to accept payment in the virtual medium for a very tangible good (like a $7.85 million dollar mansion).
So, check out what’s in store this week and if the bubble burst or bust. [Hint – the bubble builders won this week and the trading shows]
Hope you enjoy, and if you have any news you’d like to share, please send it our way at contactus@payments.com.
Bubble Builders
Innovation, as we know, is the theme of payments solution providers and more companies are showing their ability to keep up with the trends by incorporating bitcoin into their platform.
- December 19, 2013 – Mt. Gox, an online cryptocurrency exchange in Japan, is collaborating with Astropay, a Latin American payments solutions provider, to offer direct bank deposits for customers in a number of Central and South American countries. Mt. Gox users in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay will be allowed to make deposits from their bank account once the rollout is complete.
- December 18, 2013 – Russian search engine Yandex has begun to track the exchange rate of Bitcoin for the US dollar, the euro and the British pound making it simple for users to follow the exchange rate.
- December 17, 2013 – A law firm in Louisville, KY will accept Bitcoin for payment.
- December 17, 2013 – A seller of a house in Southampton, N.Y. is asking $799,000 or the equivalent value in Bitcoin.
- December 17, 2013 – Idea.me has become the first crowdfunding platform to take Bitcoin. It was created in Argentina and is accepted in seven countries in Latin America.
- December 17, 2013 – Bitcoin is named as Google’s 10th most searched “What is…” of 2013.
- December 16, 2013 – The first bitcoin ATM was installed in Europe in Finland by Lamassu.
- December 16, 2013 – Kyle Drake built Coinpunk, an open source Bitcoin wallet that Apple can’t ban because it is housed in its own server that may be accessed from any device. The mobile web interface comes with a QR code scanner.
- December 14, 2013 – December 17, 2013 – Jack and Laura Sommer, the former owners of the Aladdin casino, are selling their Las Vegas mansion and are open to accepting Bitcoin for the $7.85 million home.
- December 13, 2013 – Netkiller, a Google cloud solution provider and Google Apps partner now accepts Bitcoin from Google Apps clients.
Bubble Busters
Hopefully not too many people were procrastinating with their holiday shopping and hoping to use bitcoin to pay this weekend, because there won’t be as many gifts under the tree after the announcements from China. Europe continues to be skeptical of the currency, warning of the dangers and instability of the currency. Google and The New York Post also chimed in, The Post going so far as calling it “a high-tech Ponzi scheme”.
- December 19, 2013 – Investors in Bitcoin continue to worry as the value of Bitcoin falls.
- December 18, 2013 – The largest Bitcoin wallet is owned by the FBI, since their seizure of Bitcoins from Dread Pirate Roberts after the closure of the Silk Road.
- December 18, 2013 – A new version of the Gameover banking malware has been updated to steal login credentials for Bitcoin exchanges.
- December 17, 2013 – The Danish Financial Supervisory Authority issued a warning about the long list of dangers of Bitcoin including that the “value of your virtual currencies can change very quickly and can in principle fall to zero.
- December 17, 2013 – The People’s Bank of China has banned the country’s domestic payments processors from handling Bitcoin transactions, Bitcoin price plummets.
- December 17, 2013 – China’s largest exchange, BTC China, stopped accepting yuan deposits.
- December 16, 2013 – Move over Bitcoin there is a new top dog in town, Dogecoin, a new cryptocurrency enters the market.
- December 16, 2013 – Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, raised concern over Bitcoin’s longevity saying, “”I think something like this technology will take hold in the future but I am not particularly optimistic about bitcoin because it suffers from being the first in the area. “We have a saying in the US that you can always tell pioneers that they are the ones with errors in their bags”.
- December 16, 2013 – Norway declared that profits from Bitcoin will fall under the wealth tax and losses can be deducted. Businesses will have to pay a 25% sales tax. This is a similar decleration by the German government that Bitcoin is a type of “private money”.
- December 15, 2013 – The New York Post declared “war” on Bitcoin, describing it as “A computerized IOU chit with no central oversight authority, bitcoin has all the makings of a high-tech Ponzi scheme”.
- December 13, 2013 – The European Banking Authority (EBA) issued a warning on a series of risks deriving from buying, holding or trading virtual currencies like Bitcoins. EBA also warned that there is no guarantee that the currency values will remain stable.
Bitcoin Bubble Tracker | Week 1
Bitcoin Bubble Tracker | Week 2
