Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin Technical Analysis 10th July

By Forexminute - Yes Option | Bitcoin | Jul 10, 2014 8:35AM BST




As can be seen from the hourly BTC/USD chart, the price of Bitcoin is now consolidating sideways and has managed to sustain just above support S1. Since the lower-top lower-bottom structure still holds and there is no sign of a reversal as yet, 600 seems to be the next stop for the digital currency. The current value of a Bitcoin stands at $621.

Traders may short the pair on any rise towards 630 for a target of 600 with a stop-loss at 638. A breach below the immediate support level of S1 would be another great opportunity to go short on the pair for the same target of 600 but with a stop-loss revised at 620. However, 600 is a good support level and all short positions are advised to be liquidated at the level. The expected short covering at and around S2 could be used as a buying opportunity for short-term gains. Long positions can be built near S2 for a target of 615 with a strict stop-loss at 595.

This is a welcome correction for medium to long-term investors, as the current price does not seem expensive given that the currency has established a fundamental support near 540-550.

Considering the increasing demand for multisig wallets, owing to the security concerns surrounding the cryptocurrencies, various companies have developed and released such wallets in recent months. Now, BitPay has released an open-source, multi-signature wallet service Copay as a solution to the security vulnerabilities, such as theft, that come attached with a private key. Transaction fees have yet again become the flavor of the discussions with a new study claiming that low Bitcoin transaction fees are unsustainable in the long run as subsidies have to go away some time and that a new system to determine the fee must be considered. It should be noted that the current system features rock-bottom transaction costs because of these subsidies.


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After the Bank of Italy, Three More Italian Institutes Question Bitcoin

By Forexminute - Deepak Tiwari | Bitcoin | Jul 13, 2014 10:44AM BST




Earlier in May this year, ForexMinute reported that the Bank of Italy had questioned Bitcoin and issued a warning to users; now, three Italian institutions have issued several warnings and asked for new legislation to eliminate loopholes and regulatory ambiguity. Like the Bank of Italy, they also believe that there is lack of any mechanism to regulate Bitcoin investments.

Money laundering and anonymity have been the two major issues that the government is worried about. According to a report on the Italian financial information system (FIU), the Bank of Italy believes that Bitcoin poses a potential risk as it can be employed to circumvent money laundering regulations or funnel funds to terrorist organizations.

According to the FIU which has been examining Bitcoin’s potential for illicit activities and looking at complaints involving suspect Bitcoin transactions, the organization believes that while transactions are recorded in an online database, it is hard to identify the parties involved; thus, there cannot be any action against those who are laundering money.

The views from the FIU are shared by Colonel Albert Reda of the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s financial police authority. Currently, it’s the Guardia di Finanza which is has any authority and resources to deal with Bitcoin; however, it believes that there are some major risks involved in Bitcoin for investors.

Volatility, Anonymity and lack of Regulation are Major Concerns Say Italian Authorities
According to Reda Bitcoin’s volatility poses a risk for investors and that its anonymity allows Italian residents to hold and transfer wealth anonymously. He believes that the Guardia di Finanza which is involved in an ongoing investigation is looking out for the case of Bitcoin and come out with any official views soon.
However, he made it clear that the absence of any form of regulation makes the digital currency a potentially powerful tool for money laundering, drug trafficking and arms trafficking. Apart from the accusation that Bitcoin is being used for contraband activities, the digital currency is also being abused that as it is not regulated it has hefty risk for investors.

Expressing his views on Bitcoin regulation, attorney General of Rome, Luigi Ciampoli, warned that Bitcoin could be abused by criminals engaged in money laundering, financing of terrorism, or mafia activities. According to him Bitcoin regulation would allow authorities to trace and identify all persons involved in digital currency transactions.

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Last week bitcoin was in a falling wedge pattern. As we started this week, there was a strong bullish breakout. However, the rally stalled at the 640 support/resistance pivot and fell, invalidating the bullish breakout, and suggesting further consolidation.

BTCUSD 4H Chart 7/17





Today, price at first continued to consolidate but ended with a strong upward*push that engulfed the previous session’s price action, as you can see in the 4H chart. This push can be a sign that bulls are indeed taking over, albeit not enough yet to break out of the overall consolidation that has been evolving throughout the month.

Although price is still stuck between the moving averages in the 4H chart, as well as a the consolidation channel, there are a few signs the market is ready to take off.
1) Today’s low respected the 200-period SMA in the 4H chart and stayed above last week’s low. This suggests that bears are no longer confident.
2) At the first half of consolidation, the bearish you saw some strong bearish 4H candles with mostly indecisive bullish ones. This week, there have been stronger bullish candles than bearish ones. This suggests bulls are starting to enter the market with force, and this might break BTCUSD to the upside.
3) The RSI has tagged 70, and has held up above 40 for the most part in July. This reflects the fact that bullish momentum is still in play.

We might still need one more push to gather more confidence in the BTC-bulls. A break above 631 should clear the falling channel resistance as well as the 100-period SMA in the 4H chart.
Failure to push above 631 would maintain the current consolidation mode. In this consolidation mode, there is downside risk towards 600. Even then, the overall trend since June would be valid, so watch out for buyers if BTCUSD does approach 600.

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Bitcoin Technical Analysis 22nd July

By Forexminute - Yes Option | Bitcoin | Jul 22, 2014 4:00PM BST




A close look at daily charts of BTC/USD shows that the digital currency is trading in a very narrow range on back of low volumes but has taken strong support at $609 which is also the monthly pivot level for the digital currency. Aggressive traders are watching the aforementioned level as any close below the above level would lead to reversals of many long trades. BTC/USD in yesterday’s trading session touched made an intraday low of $611.5 but saw some buying at lower levels and closed towards the higher point of the day. The momentum indicators for the digital currency are in flat trajectory which confirms the current sideways movement in BTC/USD.



BTC/USD on hourly charts has support at levels of $611.94, but has been trading in a very narrow trading range, finding it difficult to cross the resistance levels of $616.94. The MACD for the BTC/USD has provided a fresh buy signal on low volumes. For long term traders, a an entry point should be initiated above $617 with a strict stop loss at $611. Meanwhile, short trades should be initiated once the BTC/USD closes below $611 with a stop loss set at $617.

In other news Latvia based airline, airBaltic has become the first airline to accept Bitcoins as a mode of payment, announcing through twitter rather than releasing an official press release.However, the airline made it clear that the Bitcoin payment is applicable on basic class fares to select countries, and travellers will have to pay a handling fee of €5.99 on each of the transaction. The use of cryptocurrency is gaining traction in the travel sector with Expedia, a key travel player, embracing the virtual currency for hotel bookings last month and reporting that the response turned out better than expected.

The increasing number of businesses accepting the digital currency only bodes well for the future despite the current narrow trading range and may provide strong buy opportunity for medium and long term trades.


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Ex Goldman Trader Opens Bitcoin Exchange



Yuzo Kano quit Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) twice: once for a rival bank, the second time to open Japan’s first bitcoin exchange since the collapse of Mt. Gox.

When Kano, 38, left his job as a derivatives and convertible bonds trader in December, bitcoin had climbed to a record $1,151. Three months later, it was worth half that after a $530 million heist at Tokyo-based Mt. Gox bankrupted what was once the virtual currency’s largest exchange.

“That’s one less competitor for us, but it also left many Japanese with a very negative impression of bitcoin,” Kano said in an interview in Tokyo on July 17. “We already had a company then and felt it was up to us to rebuild the trust.”

Since Mt. Gox closed in February, acquiring the digital currency in Japan meant going to the city’s only bitcoin ATM machine or arranging a person-to-person deal. Kano’s bitFlyer website allows anyone with a Japanese bank account to buy and sell the coins. The service began in April and eschews the trading options used by other exchanges in favor of a simple interface that would appeal to beginners, Kano said, declining to give subscriber numbers.

While Mt. Gox, operated by a Frenchman residing in Tokyo, catered mostly to foreigners, its bankruptcy was widely covered by domestic media. That has tended to scare off Japanese individuals, who Kano says are already averse to risks. Not so the nation’s government. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party has taken a hands-off approach to the virtual currency which it sees aiding Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to spur venture funding for innovation, a June report by the LDP’s special committee on IT strategy shows.

Game Over

Kano raised 160 million yen ($1.6 million) from a Japanese venture capital firm to start bitFlyer in what he says was the country’s biggest investment in bitcoin to date. He is now seeking to raise cash from an overseas fund so the company can offer the service outside of Japan by year-end, he said.

“If we have another fiasco like Mt. Gox, it’s game over,” Kano said, speaking in his company’s sparsely-furnished, glass-walled office a few blocks away from the Japanese parliament. “There needs to be monitoring to prevent that from happening.”

Kano’s company is also seeking to set security standards and personal identification guidelines for bitcoin trading in the Asian nation, through the Japan Authority of Digital Asset, which groups bitFlyer with CoinPass and the Japanese unit of Kraken, a San Francisco-based exchange.

Mt. Gox Vacuum

Trading of the digital currency may expand as new entrants seek to take advantage of the vacuum left by Mt. Gox. BitOcean, a Chinese startup, joined with New York-based Atlas ATS Inc. to bid for the assets of the defunct exchange operator and the two companies plan to start a bitcoin platform in Japan by August, Nan Xiaoning, the Beijing-based founder and chief executive officer of BitOcean, said in an interview on July 15.

Kraken is also planning a Japanese-language website for bitcoin-yen trading, Chief Executive Officer Jesse Powell said in an interview with Kyodo News in March. The exchange currently accepts dollars, euro and the Korean won.

Bitcoin fetched $618.71 or 459.45 per euro as of 9:13 a.m. in Tokyo today, according to CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index.

Unlike most of its rivals, which link buyers and sellers together, bitFlyer is the counterparty for either transaction, Kano said. That allows for deals to be concluded instantaneously and without complicated price-setting mechanisms that can be off-putting to newcomers, he said.

“That’s a major advantage we have over other exchanges, but it also means we take on the risk,” he said. “Controlling that risk is something you can’t do without experience.”

Kano first joined Goldman Sachs in 2001 after graduating from Tokyo University with a Master’s degree in fluid dynamics. The branch of physics studying movement of liquids and gases gave Kano an appreciation for complex systems and the programming skills needed to simulate them, he said.

After 3 1/2 years as an analyst he left to join BNP Paribas SA to learn how to trade. His second stint at Goldman Sachs lasted 6 1/2 years.

“There is no stability in working for Goldman and doing something on my own has a greater upside,” Kano said. “I like complex systems, that’s why I became a derivatives trader. Now it’s bitcoin.”

Visa Inc. CEO Charles Scharf Does Not Rule Out From Using Bitcoin

By Forexminute - Deepak Tiwari | Bitcoin | Aug 5, 2014 9:36AM BST




In his answer to the question whether Visa Inc. had any virtual currency plans among its payment blueprints, this Visa chief executive Charles Scharf said the company was open to facilitating the growing use of Bitcoin and others that may emerge. It looks Visa Inc. may in future may consider Bitcoin, the new technology that is transforming the way money is being seen and used.

Charles Scharf clears that Visa is not a currency, it’s a network and his company can process real or virtual currencies to the extent that it makes sense. According to him it is possible but his organization is not thinking about it currently. However, the company is moving towards digital currency as it launched digital laboratory to develop blueprint for the future of payments.

According to the blueprint from Visa Inc. a car’s*onboard computer may in the future be used for easy and convenient payment without any interruptions at restaurants, grocery stores and almost anywhere. Moving ahead towards the digital solutions the company last week unveiled Visa Digital Solutions, a technology agnostic suite of tools.
The suite of tools including software development kits that can be used by developers to turn any internet connected device into a payments system according to the company are going to help frictionless payment. The company is now seeing connected thermostats and cars and everything and in its view a lot of those things will become points of transaction.

Visa Inc. Not Showing Interest in Digital Wallets

Visa Inc. believes that its job is to allow that innovation to occur in way that is safe and secure and with the same characteristics as cards allow in the physical world today. Interestingly, though the company has shown its interest in facilitating online and mobile payments, it’s no longer interested in digital wallets.

In fact, Visa Inc. replaced its V.me digital wallet with Visa Checkout which it describes as an online payments experience. Sharing his views Sam Schrauger, senior vice-president of digital solutions at Visa, presides over its newly launched digital laboratory said that PayPal can*be called a wallet but it’s not *necessarily the initial intent which was to let people pay each other.

Sam Schrauger added that when someone drills down to what consumers see as pain in payment is delay; however, payment works best when it is a non-event i.e. it’s fast and nothing goes wrong.


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For a country which is under heavy debts and has mortgaged most of its natural assets for the same, Ecuador was always a perfect place to use cryptocurrencies. However, the government there took an innovative stand by first, banning all forms of decentralized digital currencies including Bitcoin, and second, announcing to launch its very own backed alternative.
And the project has finally started to roll, as per a report published on Bloomberg recently.

According to the reports, Republic of Ecuador will launch its official cryptocurrency in October this year. As its legislation has already been approved by the President Correa’s government last month, there would be no hassles in implementing this project. A monetary organization is also planned on papers for now, which will subsequently be regulating the yet-to-be-named coin. Most importantly, the coin will be backed by “liquid assets”, like oil.

The Ecuador’s Central Bank, Banco Central del Ecuador, has shied away from providing any more information regarding the upcoming launch. An earlier statement from National Assembly however is enough to fill the space, which says: “Electronic money will stimulate the economy. It will be possible to attract more Ecuadorian citizens, especially those who do not have checking or savings accounts and credit cards alone.”

However, an internet research brought us more facts to justify the Ecuador National Assembly’s reason to nod for a regulated digital currency. The country has an enormous debt on its shoulders, which has been mortgaged for its depleting oil and gold reserves. The US Dollar meanwhile is draining constantly from the economy amidst rising public spending since 2007. The idea here is to introduce an alternative currency so that the US Dollar can be preserved to pay back the debts.
The soon-to-launch cryptocurrency however won’t be distributed for free, like unbacked and rebellious Auroracoin. As per the available reports, it will be forced upon the citizens in exchange of Dollars. For obvious reasons, it won’t go down the throats of many.


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This is by far the most depressing day in the cryptocurrency markets as every top coin, including the likes of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Darkcoin, Dogecoin, etc. have fallen massively in the last 24 hours. The series of falls are supposedly surfaced due to a huge stack of Bitcoin (almost 1,000 units) that have been sold by Ethereum lately.

The huge drop in Bitcoin prices have thus created a ripple effect. The major one to have influenced by it is Litecoin, followed by NXT, Dogecoin and Peercoin – all of which has fallen by double-digit percentages. Nonetheless, they were already dropping due to certain subjective issues of their own, but Bitcoin’s instability has impacted their market caps and prices further.

Here is the full report:

BTC/USD
The BTC/USD opened yesterday while being trading at around $591. It stayed in its trademark style in the initial hours, remaining between narrow trading ranges. However, the pair massively slipped in afternoon trading hours, coinciding with the time when over 1,000 BTC were sold by Ethereum. The Bitcoin market, which had already decoupled itself from the influential events long ago, wasn’t saved by the ongoing optimism within the economy. At the end of the day, the BTC/USD closed at around $573.

This trend is continuing even at present. At press time, the BTC/USD has fallen over 3% in last 24 hours and is being priced at $570.45. We though can speculate it to be its bottom, following which it may rebound soon due to the enough buying pressure at low.

LTC/BTC
The LTC/BTC was the biggest shock of the day as it fell more than 16% in last 24 hours. While the fall is definitely caused by the massive slip seen in Bitcoin charts, another reason why LTC/BTC have faced the maximum damage is its miners who are constantly dumping Litecoin in order to comply with their investments in expensive ASIC machines. This two-side attack has resulted in what we see now, a terribly devastating market.

The LTC/BTC opened yesterday while being traded at around 0.01177000 BTC and fell in sync with Bitcoin, eventually closing at the six month low 0.01016340 BTC. There is however a chance that investor starts buying LTC at bottom, but the upcoming surge might live short in absence of any crucial update.


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Over time, we have hearing about major online retails and businesses’ plans to accept cryptocurrencies as payments. While some of them have already started to accept them as one, few are still planning the revolutionary integrations. eBay is counted among the latters which have been monitoring Bitcoin’s growing adaption from a long time. And now, it has cleared its stance on the matter.

As confirmed by The Wall Street Journal, the ecommerce shark is reportedly meeting several Bitcoin payment processing companies in regards to integrate the digital currency payments on its subsidiary Braintree.
Braintree was acquired by eBay last year in an expensive deal worth $800 million. This payment processing platform is also providing services for other websites including the likes of Github and Uber. This simply means that any sort of Bitcoin integration into Braintree would make its payment options available on multiple online companies. But there are few obstacles as well.

It is speculated that most of the eBay’s meetings with multiple Bitcoin payment processing companies have concluded into nothing. The ecommerce company however is speculated to reach an agreement with Coinbase, as per the WSJ has written in its report. Coinbase currently handles the Bitcoin services of some of the world’s major companies like Dell, Dish, Overstock, Reddit and Expedia.

In the end, the most ultimate hope here is the integration of Bitcoin on eBay and PayPal. There have been numerous reports early regarding this agreement. However, both the companies have always shied away from revealing their plans on the superbly growing Bitcoin. eBay’s decision meanwhile adds some more points to the expanding Bitcoin economy and injects positivity for some really great news in future.


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BitQuick Launches its Trading Platform for the Middle-East Customers

By Forexminute - Deepak Tiwari | Bitcoin | Aug 27, 2014 7:41PM BST




After delivering their Bitcoin buying and selling platform services to customers worldwide, BitQuick is now focusing into Middle-East. To announce the latest launch, the company resorted to social media and posted on its Twitter account that it has launched a trading platform for the Middle East which will allow enthusiasts in the region to buy and sell Bitcoin.

BitQuick did not reveal too much information about the launch; however, it made clear that they have launched support for six currencies that include the USD and have made the buying and selling of the digital currency available in several countries like Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and more in the Middle-East.

There are not many Bitcoin companies that have focused into the potential market in petro-dollar rich Middle-East and the latest step from BitQuick is going to be a megahit among the customers in the region. The company has surprised many observers of Bitcoin industry as most companies are focusing North & South America, Europe, and Asia for their expansion.
Not just buying and selling platform for Bitcoin but also a dedicated site for prospective Middle Eastern customers has been launched by the company. It will be BitQuick.me for the customers from the Middle-East which is going to cater their requirement for selling or buying of the digital currency with ease and comfort.

Walking Into the Less Walked Territory

In its announcement the company says that users can buy Bitcoin instantly with Cash Deposit or Bank Transfer from sellers with Bitcoins already in escrow for a low 2% fee. The company source further added that buying Bitcoin can customers can use them for whatsoever purpose and even sell them with no fee.

A lot of apprehensions are being placed by the critics as this is kind of new service for the customers and none knows whether it will be able to attract people or not. If once this feature catches the attention of the customers, some other Bitcoin companies may consider offering similar services as well.

Middle-East which so far has been seen as less lucrative a market for Bitcoin companies may get fresh air of life with the latest decision to launch a buying and selling platform for customers. The company has ventured in the less walked territory and for this simple decision it is being praised by the people who support for the global expansion of the Bitcoin reach.


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