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July 13th, 2018- In This Issue:
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BITCOIN PRICE ALERT
BITCOIN UP 1.2% @ $6,255.03
Nothing significant has changed since our last newsletter. We can't say it any better than we did last time, so we are repeating our commentary from our last roundup.
The articles are brand new and are even more bullish than at the beginning of the month.
Without going into a long winded explanation of the technical aspects of the market, or dark forces hiding in the shadows trying fool you into selling your bitcoins right before the price skyrockets to new all time highs.
We will only do what we can to implore you to add to your bitcoin holdings, now is another chance to capture bottom basement prices.
We don't know if this is the last chance, but it very well may be.
We cannot possibly relay to you how much profit over time is awaiting those smart enough to place their faith in bitcoin, as we have..
Don't pass up these low low prices, whether they prove to be the absolute bottom or not no one knows for sure. What we feel is certain to happen over time is that bitcoin will once again test its all time highs. Whether that's 6 days from now, 6 weeks or even 6 years, the return from here will be huge.
The metals market has been dormant for years, and investors have moved funds to the crypto-currency markets as exhibited by the outflows going directly to bitcoin over the past 24 months.
The stock market is within a few hundred points of the highest level its ever been in history, this translates to being close to the highest level of risk ever in history.
Bitcoin stands to gain by any global financial turmoil, as bitcoin has firmly planted itself among investment strategies offering a safe port, a haven against financial collapse, an inflation hedge, and as this incredible new asset class that has captivated the attention of all the major financial markets as it is poised to become a mainstay of any well balanced financial portfolio.
Believe us when we tell you, you are ahead of the curve, an early investor and you are poised to realize incredible returns, both in the relative short term and as a foundational long term investment as well. WE THINK ��
As always, buy the dips, hold on to your bitcoins for as long as you can and spread the word. Tell your friends, your relatives and anyone else who will stand around long enough to listen about Bitcoins, believe me you will be doing them a huge favor.
Visit BitvestIRA for information on using your IRA to invest in bitcoin at 20% below spot price. Or call us directly with any questions at 1-844-BIT-VEST (1-844-248-8378)
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Wall Street's Tom Lee cuts his year-end bitcoin price target by about 20%
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Tom Lee, the only major Wall Street strategist to issue
bitcoin
price targets, told CNBC on Thursday he sees the world's largest cryptocurrency by the end of the year at more than $20,000 per unit - 20 percent less than his previous estimate.
"Bitcoin has historically traded at 2.5 times its mining costs. It's not out of the question that it could be over $20,000 by the end of the year at fair value," the Fundstrat Global Advisors co-founder said on "Squawk Box."
That's down from Lee's previous year-end projection of $25,000.
But he stressed that investors should not quibble over a few thousand dollars because any return approaching $20,000 would be about 200 percent higher than current levels - around $6,600 in early Thursday trading, according to data from CoinDesk.
Bitcoin at $6,600 brings prices back to the lows in April, which marked the halt of a slide from nearly $20,000 in late 2017. Since its most recent top around $9,800 in May, bitcoin has lost about 30 percent
However, Lee remains undeterred. "The reason bitcoin looks really good here is the cost of mining around $7,000 fully loaded. And the difficulty is rising. So by the end of the year, it's going to be $9,000."
Cryptocurrency miners use high powered computers that use a lot of electricity to complete a series of complex calculations to create a bitcoin. The bitcoin protocol calls for a finite number of bitcoins of 21 million, of which about 80 percent have already been made.
Lee, chief equity strategist J.P. Morgan from 2007 to 2014, said bitcoin and blockchain, the technology underlying it, is a "multidecade story" that's in the "early stages" of transformation.
"I did wireless [research] in the 1990s. I saw 20 years of mobile and internet convergence. To me, this is not that different" in terms of how an industry has change over time, he said.
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Bloomberg: Billionaire Steven Cohen Backs Crypto, Blockchain Hedge Fund
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Billionaire Steven Cohen, the founder of Point72 Asset Management, is reportedly backing a crypto and blockchain-focused hedge fund, Bloomberg reports Friday, July 13.
Cohen invested in Arianna Simpson's cryptocurrency hedge fund, Autonomous Partners, via his private equity firm Cohen Private Ventures, according to Bloomberg's anonymous source.
Point72 Asset Management, whose most recent portfolio value is almost $24 billion, is headed by Andrew B. Cohen, who is also the Managing Director of Cohen Private Ventures.
Simpson founded Autonomous Partners in December 2017. In an interviewwith Fortune on July 12, she said that the fund has already secured "funding in the low eight digits" from VC and private equity firm Union Square Ventures, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, and former PayPal COO and Craft Ventures co-founder David Sacks.
Simpson emphasized that the fund seeks investments from partners that "can be very much value-add beyond their capital."
As Fortune reports, a low percentage of Autonomous Partners is devoted to major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). The fund is mostly focused on crypto infrastructure projects, anonymity-oriented altcoins, and crypto companies that tackle scalability issues. The fund has also invested in OX, a protocol for decentralized crypto exchanges.
Simpson told Fortune that her fund has held off from investing in Ripple (XRP) pending clarification from U.S. regulators as to whether XRP will be classified as a security. She added that she "think[s] the whole space is still waiting for a bit more clarity."
According to data from Autonomous Research, the number of crypto-focused funds was estimated at 251 as of April 2018, 175 of which were opened in 2017. In 2018, only 26 more funds have been established, signalling a possible downtrend in momentum.
As Cointelegraph reported April 3, various sources from the crypto space have warned that 10 percent of crypto funds could potentially be forced to close in 2018, allegedly due to the negative impact of regulatory uncertainty.
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BITCOIN MARKET 'STILL IN A GROWTH PHASE,' SAYS BULLISH TRADING EXPERT
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Octagon Strategy trader Ryan Rabaglia reminds investors to look at the bigger picture for Bitcoin, while claiming increased regulation will eventually drive prices higher.
A trending belief in the cryptocurrency space over recent months is that increased regulatory clarity will drive the price of Bitcoin $6695.1 +0.29% higher and help it break out of a half-year-long bearish trend. Octagon Strategy trader Ryan Rabaglia is one expert who shares this belief.
Rabaglia told CNBC that, despite the intense selling pressure throughout 2018, the macro picture for Bitcoin is still overwhelmingly positive. He explained:
"I think it's more interesting to sort of remember where we came from in this market. Year-over-year we are up well over a hundred percent still and the markets are still in a growth phase, which I know a lot of people have been saying and have said and will probably continue to say - you have to be reminded that the industry is still only eight years old".
"There is still a lot of growth to sort of get through and to go through. That there are going to be a lot of obstacles in something so young and immature. But yes, we are still bullish and we are still upgrading this space in a bullish manner".
For Rabaglia - as well as for others - regulatory clarity will be the catalyst for institutional buyers to flood the market. He explained:
"The uncertainty that is driven around this regulation is what gives pressure to this market and drives it further down as people don't know exactly where it is going to end up. But at the same time, that same topic is going to be what is going to drive it higher in the end. Once we actually establish that regulation, the professional players that are going to be entering the market and that have already going to continue and they're going to get that support from the regulatory environment that they have been looking for".
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Bitcoin will reach $50,000 by end of year, says founder of bitcoin exchange
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Despite the recent bloodbath in cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin bull Arthur Hayes said the popular digital coin will reach $50,000 by the end of the year.
Bitcoin's price has been on a wild roller coaster with investors, but "something that goes up to [around] $20,000 in one year can have a correction," Hayes, the co-founder and CEO of BitMEX, said on "
Fast Money
" Friday. BitMEX, or Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange, is the largest cryptocurrency trading platform by volume.
"We could definitely find a bottom in the $3,000 to $5,000 range," he said. "But we're one positive regulatory decision away, many an ETF approved by the SEC, to climbing through $20,000 and even to $50,000 by the end of the year."
In May, Hayes told CNBC that bitcoin would reach $50,000 by the end of the year. He remained bullish on his forecast about the coin, despite a deep retrenchment in the digital currency's price.
Last week bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell below the $6,000 mark. The coin was priced around $5,900 Friday 5 p.m. ET, a steep decline from the December 2017 highs of around $19,500. Bitcoin is down 57 percent in 2018.
Meanwhile, ethereum, litecoin, bitcoin cash and ripple are down for the year as well. But Hayes pointed out that bitcoin's volatile nature - and the possibility of large gains -is what makes it so attractive to investors.
"We've done these kind of moves before," he said. With more people in the market comes more capital and the potential for faster jumps in price, Hayes added.
"Now that we have more visibility, more people talking about [bitcoin], the time between an aggressive bear market and an aggressive bull market, I think, is going to shorten," he said.
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One Fifth of Bitcoin is Permanently Lost, Real Supply of BTC is Very Low
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Stories of lost Bitcoins, abandoned in old laptops, being dug out when cryptocurrency began to surge only to prove inaccessible have become part of crypto folklore. People obsessing over PIN numbers and passwords standing in the way of a new car, a luxury holiday or their kids university funds are common.
According to an article in the The Wall Street Journal 20% of all the Bitcoin in circulation is actually lost, existing in limbo, either forgotten about or inaccessible to its owner. Bitcoin is stored in a digital wallet which can only be accessed with the owner's personal identification number. Unlike the PIN from a bank issued ATM card, a digital wallet PIN address is much longer and considered to be virtually unhackable.
As cases of Bitcoin loss have risen and been widely reported on they have given birth to a new kind of hunter. Individuals and small firms have emerged to try and help those who have thrown away their personal fortunes, for a fee of course.
One such company called Wallet Recovery Services employees four people, who remain anonymous to maintain the companies discretion, to use whatever information the owner can put together in order to employ a brute force decryption on Bitcoin wallets. The company charges 20% of any coins it recovers, but the process is slow and so far only around 30% successful.
Another option is New York-based We Recover Data. The company began as a resource to help corporations recover lost or damaged data and uses those same techniques to help those who have lost their cryptocurrency. They charge a variable rate depending on the amount of damage or complexity of the security system, but boast a 95% (overall) success rate.
In the same vein is Chainanylsis which works specifically with the FBI on crypto related crimes. They do not offer their services to individuals and when the WSJ contacted them for an estimate they were told: "more than you can afford." Working with the FBI they use powerful software which checks throughout the blockchain to locate where thefts have taken place. Software which could be used to recover lost Bitcoin.
Going low tech Jason Miller of South Carolina has tuned his skills as a hypnotist to manipulating his client's memories in order to reveal the repressed information knocking around in their sub-conscious.
Everybody has a photographic memory. With skilled hypnotic regression, you can access that photograph." Miller says about his services, that have so far had a 50% success rate, he charges .5 Bitcoin up front and 5% fee of whatever is recovered.
Of course, all of this pain and suffering can be easily avoided by jotting down relevant passwords and PIN numbers on paper, which are then put in a safe place as many exchanges and wallet makers recommend.
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BITCOIN MOST LIKELY TO GAIN MASS ADOPTION, ACCORDING TO NEW SURVEY
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More than 60 professionals, a majority of whom were investors or business executives, completed the 2018
Cryptocurrency Survey
conducted by law firm Foley & Lardner LLP.
The survey participants overwhelmingly see Bitcoin $6799.96 -0.15% and Ethereum $486.407 -0.09% as the leaders of the cryptocurrency space. Despite different use-cases, Bitcoin is viewed as the most likely to gain the broadest adoption for payments as money by 43 percent of respondents, with Ethereum a distant second at 17 percent - followed by Ripple, Dash and privacy-focused coins ZCash and Monero, respectively.
However, Ethereum was considered as the best investment opportunity by
38 percent
of respondents, just above the most renowned cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, which received
35 percent
of the votes.
Currently, regulators have stopped short of giving the green light while giving mixed signals and citing concerns about valuation, liquidity, custody, arbitrage, and possible manipulation.
One of the most telling findings saw a majority (58 percent) of respondents disagree that nations or central banks should create their own cryptocurrencies, with only 25 percent in favor. Recent criticisms of Venezuela's cryptocurrency dubbed the "Petro" due to a lack of transparency, as well as most central banks still rejecting the idea of issuing cryptocurrencies seem to confirm this sentiment.
Many of the grievances with the cryptocurrency industry today are related to storage and securing of crypto assets with 67 percent saying that private key management poses a strong or very strong risk. Other security concerns in descending order of "strong" and "very strong risk" included:
- Hackers and security breaches (71 percent)
- Fraudulent ICOs (62 percent)
- Manipulative trading (61 percent)
Respondents were largely divided on which consensus algorithm, i.e. proof-of-work (e.g.Bitcoin) or proof-of-stake (e.g. Ethereum), has the greatest long-term sustainability. Both validation methods received 28 percent, though a large percentage (26 percent) said that they don't have an opinion on the matter.
Finally, concerns over regulatory clarity, or the lack thereof, was one of the biggest takeaways from the survey.
Of the respondents, 72 percent believe that the cryptocurrency industry does not have a well-grounded understanding of existing financial markets or financial services regulations on state and federal levels.
What's more, 84 percent indicated that ICOs should be regulated by the federal government, states or both. Nevertheless, 58 percent said they would still take the risk and invest in or start a cryptocurrency business.
But while the vast majority want legal clarity, 86 percent think the cryptocurrency space should self-regulate by developing their own voluntary standards. Meanwhile, 89 percent say the industry should explore adopting standards through formalized self-regulation, with most believing that any model of self-regulation should be subject to regulatory oversight.
Read More...
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| New Paper Reveals Massive Bitcoin Backing |
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Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have been handed huge support this morning from researchers at
Imperial College London, who have said digital currencies are primed for mass adoption.
The backing of the researchers could boost the price of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, which many have accused of being less well suited to handling mass payments than the traditional financial system, run by the likes of Visa and MasterCard.
"The world of cryptocurrency is evolving as rapidly as the considerable collection of confusing terminology that accompanies it," said Imperial professor William Knottenbelt.
"There's a lot of scepticism over cryptocurrencies and how they could ever become a day-today payment system used by the man on the street. In this research we show that cryptocurrencies have already made significant headway towards fulfilling the criteria for becoming a widely accepted method of payment."
The paper, paid for by brokerage eToro, found cryptocurrencies are already equipped to fulfil one of the three fundamental roles of traditional fiat money: acting as a store of value.
The three criteria for mass adoption the researchers laid out are:
- Store of value: allowing individuals to make intemporal choices on when to spend their purchasing power
- Medium of exchange: facilitating the exchange of goods and services by eliminating the inefficiencies associated with a barter economy
- Unit of account: acting as a measure of value in the economic system.
According to the paper, "meeting the last two criteria will require bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to make progress on remaining challenges such as scalability, design and regulation."
"The first email was sent in 1971, but it took nearly three decades for the technology to become commonplace with a user-friendly interface in the form of hotmail," said eToro's UK managing director Iqbal Gandham.
"The first ever bitcoin transaction took place a little over eight years ago and today we are already seeing it begin to meet the requirements of everyday money. Given the speed of adoption, we believe that we could see Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the high street within the decade. There are of course barriers to mainstream adoption, but they are far from insurmountable."
Imperial's Zeynep Gurguc, who co-authored the report, said: "New payment systems (or asset classes) do not emerge overnight but it is worth noting that the concept of money has evolved - even in our lifetime - from cash to digital or contactless payments."
The bitcoin price has - along with most other cryptocurrencies struggled to find footing in recent months after an eye-watering 50 percent sell off at the beginning of the year.
However, in recent weeks the bitcoin price has jumped multiple times - giving some holders hope of a return to the bull market.
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New York State Regulators Approve New
Power Rate Structure for Crypto Miners
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New York state regulators have approved a new electricity rate scheme for
cryptocurrency
miners that will allow them to negotiate contracts, Bloomberg
reported
July 12. According to Bloomberg, several months ago the state of New York gave permission to 36 municipal power authorities to charge crypto miners more than other consumers.
The Massena municipal utility will introduce a new rate structure for crypto
miners who are interested in conducting operations there. The utility will consider contracts on a case-by-case basis, which will protect other utility customers from increased rates. New York State Department of Public Service Chair John Rhodes said in a
statement:
"We must ensure that business customers pay a fair price for the electricity that they consume. However, given the abundance of low-cost electricity in Upstate New York, there is an opportunity to serve the needs of existing customers and to encourage economic development in the region."
Due to an abundance of hydroelectricity,
New York
is known for cheap electricity rates. Residential consumers in Massena pay an energy charge of about $0.039 per kilowatt hour, where the national average residential rate is $0.13 per kilowatt hour. The state has become a destination for digital currency miners, who employ powerful specialized computers for the energy-intensive activity.
Regions rich in hydroelectric power have resisted the influx of miners over the past year either through outright bans on the industry or increased power prices. In March, the city of Plattsburgh, New York passed a moratorium on new crypto mining operations in the city. The biggest mining operation in the city reportedly used 10 percent of Plattsburgh's 104 megawatt hour (Mwh) electricity allotment in January and February.
In Quebec, Canada, provincial utility Hydro-Quebec proposed a new regime under which blockchain companies will be required to bid for electricity and quantify expected job creation and investment. The utility seeks to allocate up to 500 megawatts, in addition to 120 megawatts of already existing initiatives. The starting rate is 1 Canadian cent ($0.0076) per kilowatt hour, which is 20 percent above the standard price.
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Copyright © 2018. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer: The information contained herein is not guaranteed, does not purport to be comprehensive and is strictly for information purposes only. It should not be regarded as investment/trading advice. All the information is believed to come from reliable sources. BitvestMint LLC does not warrant the accuracy, correctness, or completeness of information in its analysis and therefore will not be liable for any loss incurred
BitvestIRA suggests that you research and evaluate the risks and rewards associated with investing in digital currencies before you make your purchase. Information on the website represents past performance and may not represent future results. BitvestIRA's representatives are not licensed as investment advisers and, accordingly, cannot offer investment advice regarding client's personal investment portfolios..
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