Bitcoin in the News : 2023-09 Price

I've been using the price chart service at Cointelegraph.com since Bitcoin in the News : 2017-01 Price (February 2017). In all that time I've never had a major problem with it -- until now. Simply put, the service isn't returning a price chart.

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Index

The light gray text near the center of the chart says, 'No Results'. I tried checking the four different price sources on the second line of the chart, plus various combinations of them, and received the same message every time.

A few other changes are worth noting. This is the first time since Bitcoin in the News : 2023-01 Price (February 2023) that the chart has listed more sources than Coinbase and Kraken. It is also the first time that Binance has been included in the sources since Bitcoin in the News : 2019-07 Price (August 2019).

The URL, which points to 'Bitcoin Price Index', has been in use since the '2017-01 Price' post. It now redirects to a URL that has dropped the last word 'Index', as in 'Bitcoin Price', although the top line of the page still says, 'Bitcoin Price Index'. When I first saw the redirected URL at the beginning of the week, the chart was missing completely, replaced by text that I neglected to read. If the price chart isn't restored before the next post on this blog, I'll look for another source for the chart.

[TBD?]

***

Later: First crack at a replacement chart service.

finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTC-USD/chart?p=BTC-USD

Yahoo.com is the same service I used in the early days of this blog. See, for example, Bitcoin in the News : 2016-12 Price (January 2017). At that time I wrote,

Like so many Yahoo services, the charting service I used for that post has declined in quality.

Nearly seven years later, the service is still available. Beggars can't be choosers, but I'll continue exploring the options for next month's post.

Working on Resourcefulness

Another month of five Saturdays gives me another opportunity for an extra blog post. The last time this happened, Bitcoin in the News : 2020 Full Year (January 2021), I wrote,

I'd like to get rid of that twirly effect when a new page is opened. It's really annoying. I've looked at the blog template several times and haven't been able to determine the cause. Maybe I should simply change the template.

I tried many of the alternative templates and most -- Not all! Why not? -- also produced the 'twirly effect'. While I was working on that, I tried a number of other browsers and noticed that they didn't twirl. Is it a Firefox issue? If so, it might be related to responsive design; maybe it's trying to find the current orientation of the screen. While I didn't solve the problem, I did manage to understand it better.

Since that doesn't make much of a post, I also reviewed the widgets on the right sidebar. First I added a link for the recent Coinbase listing on NASDAQ. A good explanation is in Coinbase IPO: Here’s What You Need To Know (forbes.com; April 2021). Then I cleaned up some of the other widgets. The 'Blog List' widget isn't working very well, but I'm not sure why. If I ever come back to it, a useful reference might be Top 100 Bitcoin RSS Feeds (feedspot.com).

***

This image from one of my chess blogs is worth mentioning here. Follow the link for details about the source of the photo (Ivan Radic on Flickr).

Four Faces of Crypto Currency
(Chess for All Ages; May 2021)

Highest Market Caps

An extra Saturday this month gave me the chance to tackle something other than the two news posts for a typical month. I decided to redo some of the widgets in the right navigation bar.

I created the single news feed in the early days of this blog -- documented in the post Market Resources (August 2015) -- and haven't touched it since, although in the years since then the symbol BTCS has evolved and been assigned to different companies. Using both 'bitcoin' and 'blockchain' as the basis for a Yahoo search, I couldn't find a good symbol to replace it. The most relevant Yahoo page...

• All Cryptocurrencies Screener

...didn't lend itself to a feed, so I added it as a resource link. Another possibility was...

• Cryptocurrencies with Highest Market Cap

...but the 'Screener' link also had market cap plus a lot more data. I took the top-3 market caps and developed an RSS feed...

• http://finance.yahoo.com/rss/headline?s=BTC-USD,ETH-USD,XRP-USD

to generate news stories on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple. This replaced the BTCS feed I used previously.

Bitcoin in the News : 2019-03 Price

In last month's post, Bitcoin in the News : 2019-02 Price, I summarized the month's price chart with:-

The individual patterns are all similar: the market is in a state of equilibrium, then something happens -- always accompanied by significant volume -- to move it quickly to another state of equilibrium. The cycle repeats.

Although there were elements of that pattern in March, the chart was more like a steady ascent, punctuated by dips that corrected within a few days.

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Index

Since there were no dramatic price jumps or drops during the month, let's look at the volumes. I count three periods of heavy volume (each bar covers six hours) and I'll include a fourth near the end of the month to give me one heavy period per week. They occurred at the following (approximate) times:-

2019-03-05 12:00 +
2019-03-16 00:00 +
2019-03-21 12:00 -
2019-03-29 06:00 +

As usual, Cointelegraph's Analysis category provided no insight. The site's Price Analysis tag had nothing special to say, concentrating more on moving averages and resistance / support levels. Several 'Price Analysis' reports mentioned the Bakkt 'institutional trading platform'. Although the name wasn't completely new to me, I haven't mentioned it on this blog. The Bakkt.com home page says,

Bakkt is building an open, seamless global network to enable you to buy, sell, store and spend digital assets simply, safely and efficiently. Backed by Intercontinental Exchange’s proven financial market infrastructure and technology, Bakkt’s secure global platform will connect investors, merchants and consumers, making it easier, faster and more cost-effective to access, trade and use digital assets.

The main entry on Wikipedia is under Intercontinental Exchange ('! : reads like a press release or a news article'), where we learn,

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is an American company that owns exchanges for financial and commodity markets, and operates 12 regulated exchanges and marketplaces. This includes ICE futures exchanges in the United States, Canada and Europe...

The section titled 'Bakkt' says,

In August 2018 Intercontinental Exchange announced that it planned to form a new company, Bakkt, which is intended to leverage Microsoft cloud solutions to create an open and regulated, global ecosystem for digital assets. The new company will work with a marquee group of organizations [...] to create an integrated platform that enables consumers and institutions to buy, sell, store and spend digital assets on a seamless global network.

The Cointelegraph 'Price Analysis' reports implied that this will be a significant development in the evolution of crypto-currencies. I expect it will be heavily promoted when it's finally available.

Bitcoin Futures

Last weekend saw the launch of bitcoin futures trading, and since this month has five Saturdays, I'll use the extra Saturday to write a short post about the event. The main product page appears to be XBT-Cboe Bitcoin Futures (cboe.com). It starts,

The First U.S. Bitcoin Futures • Bitcoin futures are now available for trading on the Cboe Futures Exchange, LLC (CFE). CFE launched trading in Cboe bitcoin futures on December 10 under the ticker symbol "XBT". This brings many benefits to traders, including transparency, efficient price discovery, deep liquidity and centralized clearing. XBT futures provides a centralized marketplace for participants to trade based on their view of bitcoin prices, gain exposure to bitcoin prices or hedge their existing bitcoin positions.

The related press release said,

Cboe Plans December 10 Launch of Bitcoin Futures Trading • CHICAGO – December 4, 2017 – Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (Cboe: CBOE | Nasdaq: CBOE), one of the world’s largest exchange holding companies, today announced that Cboe Futures Exchange (CFE), plans to offer trading in bitcoin futures beginning at 5:00 p.m. CT on Sunday, December 10, 2017, at the start of Global Trading Hours. Monday, December 11, will be the first full day of trading, and trading will be free through December.

Cboe’s bitcoin futures will trade on CFE under the ticker symbol 'XBT'. XBT [SM] futures are cash-settled contracts based on Gemini’s auction price for bitcoin, denominated in U.S. dollars. Gemini Trust Company, LLC (Gemini) is a digital asset exchange and custodian that allows customers to buy, sell, and store digital assets such as bitcoin. XBT futures are specifically designed to allow participants to implement straightforward trading strategies, through settlement to a single, tradeable auction price.

Ed Tilly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cboe Global Markets, said: "Given the unprecedented interest in bitcoin, it’s vital we provide clients the trading tools to help them express their views and hedge their exposure. We are committed to encouraging fairness and liquidity in the bitcoin market. To promote this, we will initially offer XBT futures trading for free."

Tyler Winklevoss, Chief Executive Officer of Gemini, said: "Developing a regulated derivatives market is the next logical and crucial step towards advancing the broader digital asset market. We have been working for years to build infrastructure to grow the digital asset market and today’s news marks a significant milestone."

On Friday, December 1, Cboe announced that CFE had filed a product certification with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to offer bitcoin futures trading. More information on XBT futures is available at www.cboe.com/xbt.

Over the last five years, the total value of all bitcoin outstanding (i.e., "market capitalization") has grown from less than $1 billion to over $183 billion with daily notional turnover over $10 billion. The total value of all cryptocurrency tokens outstanding is now approximately $332 billion.

The link www.cboe.com/xbt returns the main product page I gave above. That last paragraph of the press release has a footnote that says,

All data given as of December 1, 2017, source: https://coinmarketcap.com/

The Coinmarketcap.com link, which I can't remember seeing before, currently lists 1360 cryptocurrencies, sorted in descending order by market cap ('Total Market Cap: $583,439,429,633'); that's $583.4 billion! Has the introduction of futures dampened the explosive price rise of bitcoin? Not exactly. Here's a bitcoin price chart for the first week of futures trading.

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Index

As for what the pundits are saying, I'll cover that in my next two posts, 'Bitcoin in the News : 2017-12 Price++'.

Bitcoin in the News : 2017-11 More++

In my previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2017-11 Price, I identified three stories that fueled the price of bitcoin in November:-

• Bitcoin futures on CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange)
• Collapse of SegWit2x
• Reaching the $10.000 mark

Curiously, those three stories occurred at the start, at the middle, and at the end of the month. Predictably, they each provoked an avalanche of commentary in the financial press. I'll mention just one article on each, although there were many more. Coincidentally, these three articles are all from cnbc.com:-

• 2017-11-03: Coinbase adds 100,000 users after CME announces bitcoin futures plans
• 2017-11-10: Bitcoin falls after developers drop SegWit2x; but 'bitcoin cash' jumps
• 2017-11-28: Bitcoin surpasses $10,000 for the first time

After these stories, the theme repeated the most involved the B-word : Bubble! I'll mention just two of the half-dozen that popped up:-

• 2017-11-01: The Head and Tail of Bitcoin Bubble (entrepreneur.com) • 'More than as an instrument to buy and sell goods and commodities, increasingly money is being invested in bitcoin to make even more money.'
• 2017-11-21: Bitcoin: An Unknowable Bubble? (seekingalpha.com) • 'There is a much-discussed in the crypto-sphere chart making rounds these days, plotting Bitcoin price dynamics against the historical bubbles of the past.'; chart gives graphical overview of past bubbles

Looking back, the first occurrence of the B-word on this blog was a passing reference in the post titled '2017-05 Price' (June 2017). Looking forward, there will be more occurrences until the bubble finally bursts. And burst it will -- maybe at a much higher price level -- but it will inevitably happen when everyone wants to exit at the same time. 'What goes up must come down', 'trees don't grow to the sky', yada-yada, etc. etc. (NB: I'm not a gloom-and-doom person, it's a party. I was reminded of this in a Yahoo.com article from Rick Newman, one of my current favorite financial writers.):-

• 2017-11-30: Owning bitcoin is so much fun • The title I originally recorded was 'Owning part of a bitcoin is the most fun I’ve ever had investing-- even if it collapses', which echoes my sentiment exactly.

Bitcoin articles have been appearing with increasing frequency in Yahoo. (NB: Exploding popularity often precedes a bubble.) Another article bearing the same date as the one above was by Daniel Roberts, another favorite financial writer:-

• 2017-11-30: 11 biggest names in crypto

Because I had never heard of most of these people, it's worth noting their names (listed alphabetically) and their companies. The ones I don't know I should research further, but there's only so much time in a day.

1. Brian Armstrong, Coinbase
2. Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum
3. Juthica Chou, LedgerX
4. Jack Dorsey, Square (also CEO Twitter)
5. Terry Duffy, CME Group (Chicago Mercantile Exchange)
6. Charlie Lee, Litecoin
7. Naval Ravikant, MetaStable, CoinList
8. Elizabeth Rossiello, BitPesa
9. Barry Silbert, Digital Currency Group ('portfolio of more than 100 investments includes all the biggest names')
10. Balaji Srinivasan, Earn.com
11. Elizabeth Stark, Lightning Labs

Yahoo has a page on bitcoin, BTC/USD ('BTCUSD=X; CCY Delayed Price. Currency in USD'), with links to current articles. I'll add this to the right navigation bar.

This would be a good point to sign off, but I touched an important subject in last month's post, Bitcoin in the News : 2017-10 More++, and there were a few relevant articles this month: 'How to value bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency)?':-

• 2017-11-05: Bitcoin Dominance Index Surpasses 61% For First Time Since March (cryptocoinsnews.com) • '% of total market cap' aka 'Reallocation of Funds From Alternative Cryptocurrencies (Altcoins) to Bitcoin'
• 2017-11-08: Bitcoin: In, Stocks: Out, One-Third of Millennials Say (fortune.com)
• 2017-11-27: Bitcoin's Rivals Multiply Amid Battle for Dominance (bloomberg.com)

We know how to value stocks by looking at various ratios of the underlying company, market share (and pricing power) being one piece of the analysis. How those ratios compare to the stock's current price -- showing good or bad value -- is a matter of judgement. What are the factors besides dominance that temper the judgement for a crypto-currency?

Bitcoin in the News : 2017-03 Price

I ended last month's post, Bitcoin in the News : 2017-02 Price, with,

I'm almost certain that I'll be doing a post next month for 2017-03 Price.

And so it is! One important difference needs to be flagged: the chart source has changed so a straightforward month-to-month comparison isn't possible.

Bitcoin Price Index

The new source is Live Bitcoin price and market cap (cryptocompare.com). Squinting at the post for '2017-02 Price' tells me that the previous source was BitcoinChain.com. The previous source allowed a custom date range, which the new source doesn't offer, so the chart shown above shows the month preceding my snapshot. As for the stories behind the price chart, I once again turn to Bitcoin price analysis (cointelegraph.com):-

• 2017-03-10: Bitcoin Price Hits $1,300 Prior to ETF Decision
• 2017-03-14: Bitcoin Price Maintains Stability at $1225, Resilient Towards ETF Ruling • 'On March 10, the US Securities and Exchange Commission officially disapproved the Winklevoss twins’ Bitcoin ETF COIN approval..'
• 2017-03-19: Bitcoin Price Declines to $926 But Recovers, Drops 16% in One Day • Why? 'Bitcoin price heavily fluctuated in value, mostly due to the unresolved issues surrounding Bitcoin scalability.'
• 2017-03-27: Bitcoin Price Stabilizes at $1,022, Scalability Debate Continues

Buy on the rumors, sell on the news? -or- Pump and dump? Maybe they are one and the same.

Bitcoin in the News : 2017-01 Price

Once again, as in

• Bitcoin in the News : 2016-06 Price, and
• Bitcoin in the News : 2016-12 Price,

I find that the dominant bitcoin news story of the previous month was its price action. Instead of gathering stories from a number of different news sources, perhaps I would be better served by finding a single reliable source for all of the month's relevant stories. But which one? A few months ago I analyzed

• Bitcoin in the News : Sources (October 2016) • 'General news sources often appearing in bitcoin news feeds:- [excluding bitcoin specific sources; ranked in descending order]'

where finance.yahoo.com was the top source. I looked at it again for 5-10 minutes, but couldn't locate any sort of regular, recurring analysis centered on bitcoin price. Perhaps it would be better to look at bitcoin specific sources. Again: which one?

Looking at my short list of January 2017 stories -- which I'll tackle in my next post -- the site that pops up the most often is cointelegraph.com. In addition, their articles often (always?) feature a bold graphic to add visual interest to the underlying story. Bingo! The page

• Bitcoin price analysis • cointelegraph.com/category/analysis

seems to be exactly what I'm looking for. Of the 15-20 stories covering the month of January, I found a half-dozen that documented the January price action:-

• 2016-12-31: Why Bitcoin Boomed in 2016, What Will Happen in 2017
• 2017-01-02: Bitcoin Breaks $1000, 1 mBTC At Par With $1
• 2017-01-06: China Warns Bitcoin Users, Panic Sellers Drive Bitcoin Price Down 21 Percent
• 2017-01-11: China’s Central Bank is Inspecting Bitcoin Operators, Bitcoin Price is Tumbling
• 2017-01-18: The Bitcoin Price Bounces Back to $900 Following Last Week’s Carnage
• 2017-02-01: Bitcoin Price Climbs Closer to $1000 As More Bitcoin Going US Way

On top of that verbal analysis, another page on the site offers a chart which can be tailored to display the latest month.

Bitcoin Price Index

The top portion of the chart shows January; the bottom portion shows January in relation to the historical, long-term price. The Cointelegraph services should be useful the next time I need a rapid analysis of the preceding month's bitcoin price.

Buying Ethereum

It's been almost 16 months since I bought my first bitcoins, a process I documented in three consecutive posts (August 2015):-

• Buying Bitcoins
• The Bitcoin Price
• Bitcoin Bid/Ask and Arbitrage

One of the advantages of that transaction has been to become familiar with Coinbase, the service that holds my account ('wallet' in cryptocurrency jargon). They send me occasional emails informing me about new features. For example, during the last few months I learned:-

• 2016-05-24: Coinbase Exchange is now GDAX, Adds Ether Trading
• 2016-06-22: Coinbase adds support for PayPal and Credit Cards
• 2016-07-21: Coinbase adds support for Ethereum
• 2016-11-07: Payment Methods for European Customers

The Ethereum announcement in July caught my full attention. After a few posts touching on the subject...

• Ethereum Crash Course (June 2016)
• Bitcoin in the News : 2016-07 More++ (August 2016; 'Ethereum DAO')
• Cornell's IC3 (October 2016; 'DAO = Decentralized Autonomous Organization')

...I felt I had sufficient knowledge to buy a small quantity. I signed on to Coinbase (always an irritating three-step process: password, SMS code, email link), discovered that I needed a fiat currency (Euros in my case) to buy anything, sold half of my bitcoin, and bought an equivalent amount of ethereum (NB: lower case, to be consistent). Coinbase charged a 1.5% commission on both sides of the transaction.

After the second transaction, Coinbase showed that I still had all of the Euros in my account. I thought about trying a double spend to see what would happen, but decided that I didn't want to risk getting a black star next to my name.

The Coinbase account overview gives a price history of the currencies. Here's a comparison of the two currencies over the past year. Did I exchange a winner for a loser?

Left: ETH; Right: BTC

In my previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2016-11 More++, I noted, 'It sounds like every purchase with bitcoin might trigger a corresponding capital gain/loss'. If this is the case when I sold half of my bitcoin (a small amount) to prepare the ethereum purchase, the accounting is going to be awkward.

Cornell's IC3

The current issue of Cornell Alumni Magazine (CAM; September/October 2016) has a relevant article, Beyond Bitcoin subtitled, 'The CU-based Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts ponders the future of financial tech'. It starts,

In April, an experimental crowdfunding project started accepting online investments. This system, called the DAO (for Decentralized Autonomous Organization), was like a cross between Kickstarter and a venture capital fund, but with a twist: interested parties had to convert their money into a new type of digital currency before they could invest. Participants could then vote "yes" or "no" on submitted proposals, deciding as a group what to invest in. When a project got enough "yes" votes, computer code would automatically disperse the funds.

The story had already popped up a few times in this blog, for example Bitcoin in the News : 2016-07, but I had never taken the time to understand it properly. The article continued,

By the end of May, the DAO had amassed the equivalent of $150 million. But a few weeks later, an anonymous hacker identified a flaw in the voting system and siphoned off more than a third of the funds. "You can think of this as a bank robbery of sorts," says Emin Gün Sirer, an associate professor of computer science at Cornell, "except one much bigger than any before it."

That Cornell connection goes deeper than that.

Sirer's work on the DAO -- studying a new type of financial technology and advising the industry on how it can be implemented and improved -- epitomizes the work that he and his colleagues do at the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3). Founded in January, it's led by Sirer and two other co-directors -- Elaine Shi, an associate professor of computer science on the Hill, and Ari Juels, a professor at Cornell Tech -- and includes collaborators at the University of California, Berkeley, and two other institutions. They comprise what Sirer calls a "dream team" of about fifty people who are looking for ways to make next-generation financial technology systems more secure, scalable, confidential, and safe, while also developing new technology-based financial products with industry partners.

For more about IC3, see Initc3.org, 'IC3: Advancing the science and applications of blockchains'. This is the second time I've used CAM as a source on a blog post. The first was 'Not a Sane Bone in His Body' (November 2012), about Bobby Fischer.

Bitcoin in X Words (or Less)

I've sometimes wondered how I would explain bitcoin to someone who knew nothing about it. While I was working on the previous post, Bitcoin in the News : Sources, I kept looking for a good introductory article on the subject. The best one I found (there are others) was the following:-

Bitcoin: What It Is And How It Works (popsci.com)

That's too much explanation and too much extraneous detail. Here are the most important sentences with some editing suggestions:-

[Bitcoin is; S/P] the digital equivalent of cash online, a system that lets participants [to] send value to anyone else with a Bitcoin address the same way they [like you] might send an email (A).

Every ten [few] minutes, new Bitcoin enter [S/P] the system. "Miners" [use] donate spare or dedicated processing power to help validate transactions around the globe. Bitcoin come [S/P] as rewards [is a reward] for that work (B).

If you want to [To] own Bitcoin, you [first] have to first get a Bitcoin address [wallet], then you have to either get someone who owns Bitcoin to give you some [bitcoin from someone else] or buy it from an exchange (C).

When you own Bitcoin, you’re assigned a value [quantity] and a cryptographic key. With the key, you’re the only person able to transfer that value [quantity] to someone else.

First some notes:-
(A) Doesn't differentiate from interbank transfers or Paypal.
(B) Rearrange.
(C) Or mine it! (but good luck with that)

Then some conventions for the word 'bitcoin':-
- Singular or plural? [S/P] -> I prefer singular, 'bitcoins' as plural
- Capitalized or not? -> No.

Putting that together gives:-

Bitcoin is the digital equivalent of cash, a system to send value like you might send an email. When you own bitcoin, you’re assigned a quantity and a cryptographic key. With the key, you’re the only person able to transfer that quantity to someone else. To own bitcoin, you first have to get a bitcoin wallet, then you have to either get bitcoin from someone else or buy it from an exchange. Every few minutes new bitcoin enters the system as 'miners' use processing power to validate transactions. Bitcoin is a reward for that work.

Maybe I should have started with a dictionary definition. And what about 'blockchain'?

Bitcoin in the News : Sources

While working on the previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2016-09 More++, I created the following table. It might be useful for future posts.

General news sources often appearing in bitcoin news feeds:- [excluding bitcoin specific sources; ranked in descending order]

finance.yahoo.com	~ 62.500 results :	site:finance.yahoo.com bitcoin
nytimes.com (A)	~ 41.000 results :	site:nytimes.com bitcoin
ft.com	~ 38.900 results :	site:ft.com bitcoin
techcrunch.com	~ 30.300 results :	site:techcrunch.com bitcoin
nasdaq.com	~ 26.700 results :	site:nasdaq.com bitcoin
reuters.com	~ 18.100 results :	site:reuters.com bitcoin
wsj.com	~ 17.100 results :	site:wsj.com bitcoin
pymnts.com (B)	~ 15.200 results :	site:pymnts.com bitcoin
cnn.com	~ 12.100 results :	site:cnn.com bitcoin
businessinsider.com	~ 11.100 results :	site:businessinsider.com bitcoin
fortune.com	~ 10.500 results :	site:fortune.com bitcoin
theregister.co.uk	~ 8.830 results :	site:theregister.co.uk bitcoin
bloomberg.com	~ 7.160 results :	site:bloomberg.com bitcoin
forbes.com	~ 4.150 results :	site:forbes.com bitcoin
theguardian.com	~ 3.660 results :	site:theguardian.com bitcoin
arstechnica.com	~ 3.180 results :	site:arstechnica.com bitcoin
cnbc.com	~ 2.780 results :	site:cnbc.com bitcoin
bbc.com	~ 1.880 results :	site:bbc.com bitcoin
huffingtonpost.com	~ 1.800 results :	site:huffingtonpost.com bitcoin
wired.com	~ 1.740 results :	site:wired.com bitcoin
ibtimes.com	~ 1.630 results :	site:ibtimes.com bitcoin
popsci.com (C)	~ 1.160 results :	site:popsci.com bitcoin
techrepublic.com	~ 897 results :	site:techrepublic.com bitcoin

Notes:
(A) e.g. Nathaniel Popper
(B) 'PYMNTS.com is reinventing the way in which companies share relevant information about the initiatives that shape the future of payments and commerce...'
(C) Popular Science

theregister.co.uk [.co.uk] -vs.- theguardian.com [.com]

Bitcoin Course Textbook

In the previous post, Bitcoin Course on Youtube, I noted,

'If you just want the lectures, simply subscribe to this channel. In this lecture (click the time to jump to the section): [...]' The 'jump to sections' correspond to the section headings of the first chapter of the course textbook.

The course textbook, 'Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies' by Arvind Narayanan et al (Draft — Feb 9, 2016), doesn't include a table of contents, so I created one myself. It can also be used as a general guide to the Youtube lectures, to locate the lecture on a a specific section.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Cryptography & Cryptocurrencies
1.1 Cryptographic Hash Functions
1.2 Hash Pointers and Data Structures
1.3 Digital Signatures
1.4 Public Keys as Identities
1.5 A Simple Cryptocurrency [GoofyCoin]

Chapter 2: How Bitcoin Achieves Decentralization
2.1 Centralization vs. Decentralization
2.2 Distributed consensus
2.3 Consensus without identity using a block chain
2.4 Incentives and proof of work
2.5 Putting it all together [Cost of mining; Getting a cryptocurrency off the ground; 51-percent attack]

Chapter 3: Mechanics of Bitcoin
3.1 Bitcoin transactions
3.2 Bitcoin Scripts
3.3 Applications of Bitcoin scripts
3.4 Bitcoin blocks
3.5 The Bitcoin network
3.6 Limitations and improvements

Chapter 4: How to Store and Use Bitcoins
4.1 Simple Local Storage
4.2 Hot and Cold Storage
4.3 Splitting and Sharing Keys
4.4 Online Wallets and Exchanges
4.5 Payment Services
4.6 Transaction Fees
4.7 Currency Exchange Markets

Chapter 5: Bitcoin Mining
5.1 The task of Bitcoin miners
5.2 Mining Hardware
5.3 Energy consumption and ecology
5.4 Mining pools

Chapter 6: Bitcoin and Anonymity
6.1 Anonymity Basics
6.2 How to De-anonymize Bitcoin
6.3 Mixing
6.4 Decentralized Mixing
6.5 Zerocoin and Zerocash

Chapter 7: Community, Politics, and Regulation
7.1: Consensus in Bitcoin
7.2: Bitcoin Core Software
7.3: Stakeholders: Who's in Charge?
7.4: Roots of Bitcoin [Cypherpunk and digital cash; Satoshi Nakamoto]
7.5: Governments Notice Bitcoin
7.6: Anti Money-Laundering
7.7: Regulation
7.8: New York's BitLicense Proposal

Chapter 8: Alternative Mining Puzzles
8.1 Essential Puzzle Requirements
8.2 ASIC-resistant puzzles
8.3 Proof-Of-Useful-Work
8.4 Nonoutsourceable Puzzles
8.5 Proof-of-Stake and Virtual Mining

Chapter 9: Bitcoin as a Platform
9.1 Bitcoin as an Append-Only Log
9.2 Bitcoins as “Smart Property”
9.3 Secure Multi-Party Lotteries in Bitcoin
9.4 Bitcoin as Public Randomness Source
9.5 Prediction Markets and Real World Data Feeds

Chapter 10: Altcoins and the Cryptocurrency Ecosystem
10.1 Altcoins: History and Motivation
10.2 A Few Altcoins in Detail [Namecoin; Litecoin; Peercoin; Dogecoin]
10.3 Relationship Between Bitcoin and Altcoins
10.4 Merge Mining
10.5 Atomic Cross-chain Swaps
10.6 Bitcoin-Backed Altcoins, “Side Chains”
10.7 Ethereum and Smart Contracts

Chapter 11: Decentralized Institutions: The Future of Bitcoin?
11.1 The Block Chain as a Vehicle for Decentralization
11.2 Routes to Block Chain Integration
11.3 Template for Decentralization
11.4 When is Decentralization a Good Idea?

Many chapters also have an additional section for 'Further Reading' and/or 'Exercises'. Some months after I first posted about the Online Bitcoin Course (March 2016), the course textbook appeared on Amazon.com: Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction, (Hardcover - 19 July 2016). Recommended!

Bitcoin Course on Youtube

While waiting for the New Online Bitcoin Course to start, I discovered the old course on Youtube.

Lecture 1 — Intro to Crypto and Cryptocurrencies (58:41) • 'First lecture of the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies online course.'

The description continued,

Published on Feb 16, 2015 • Course website:
https://piazza.com/princeton/spring2015/btctech/home

For the full experience, sign up via the link on that page. If you just want the lectures, simply subscribe to this channel. In this lecture (click the time to jump to the section): [...]

The 'jump to sections' correspond to the section headings of the first chapter of the course textbook. This first lecture and subsequent lectures are on the Youtube channel, Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies Online Course, which is dedicated to the course. My guess is that this is the first incarnation of the course that eventually appeared on Coursera.

New Online Bitcoin Course?

In last week's post, Bitcoin in the News : 2016-08, I wrote,

One of the few 'fortunately' stories harks back to 'Online Bitcoin Course' (March 2016), which was taken down at the end of June. Is that the same course or a new course? I'll find out in a future post.

I signed up for the new course and was informed via email,

You’re enrolled in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies. We’ll let you know the moment the course opens for learners. For now, we’re busy putting the final touches on things. See you soon!

The email pointed to another page, Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies - Princeton University (coursera.org), that starts,

About this course: To really understand what is special about Bitcoin, we need to understand how it works at a technical level. We’ll address the important questions about Bitcoin, such as: How does Bitcoin work? [...] After this course, you’ll know everything you need to be able to separate fact from fiction when reading claims about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

That leads to the same final question as my previous post: 'Is that the same course or a new course? I'll find out in a future post.' Title this current post; 'Kicking the Can'...

Core Developers

While continuing to follow the Online Bitcoin Course (started March 2016), I received a message from the domain hosting the course.

In 2014, Coursera began developing a new technology platform to improve your learning experience, and to allow courses to run more frequently. The majority of our courses are now offered on the new platform. This month, we are closing the old platform. One or more courses you joined are on the old platform. Effective June 30, 2016, courses on the old platform will no longer be available. You should use this opportunity to save any relevant course materials or assignments.

That meant I had to finish the course by the end of this month. I'm already on the last lecture -- 'Lecture 11: The Future of Bitcoin' -- with only a 'bonus' lecture to follow, so I should finish in time. In any case, the last lectures are somewhat less interesting than the first, as they deal with topics that are mainly of interest to the academic community.

While working through the lectures, I've noted a few topics worth pursuing on this blog. The first is shown below.

Lecture 7.2 - Bitcoin core software (3:00)

Pictured are a handful of core developers at the time the course was created, around mid-2014. While researching this post, I discovered that the term 'bitcoin core developers' means different things to different people. Exluding Satoshi Nakamoto, the other five are listed on the page Bitcoin Development (bitcoin.org), under 'Bitcoin Core contributors (ordered by number of commits)'. Their names, along with the number of results returned by a Google search are as follows:-

• Wladimir van der Laan (10.800 results)
• Gavin Andresen (107.000)
• Jeff Garzik (42.700)
• Gregory Maxwell (84.700)
• Pieter Wuille (16.900)

A Reddit.com discussion appeared this week titled A thank you to Bitcoin Core developers. Although it's largely political, as is much of the noise around bitcoin, it's a sentiment shared by many.

Ethereum Crash Course

In the previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2016-05, I wrote,

Trendy names are part of the bitcoin mystique. Here's another one. [Ethereum news story] A Google search on this blog picks up scattered transient references to 'Ethereum', apparently from the embedded news feeds in the right navbar, plus a couple of real references, including News : 2016-03. Time for a separate post on this topic?

Yes, it's time. The main site for the product/service is Ethereum Project (ethereum.org). It starts,

Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference. These apps run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around and represent the ownership of property.

Wikipedia's main article is Ethereum:-

Ethereum is a public blockchain platform with programmable transaction functionality. It provides a decentralized virtual machine that can execute peer-to-peer contracts using a cryptocurrency called Ether. [...] History: Ethereum was initially described in a white paper by Russian Canadian Vitalik Buterin, a programmer involved with Bitcoin, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications. As opposed to other "bitcoin 2.0" projects that were being built on top of the Bitcoin protocol, Ethereum created its own blockchain to provide greater development flexibility by inclusion of a Turing complete programming language.'

The phrase 'Turing complete' is computer science jargon for a full programming language. Also relevant is Wikipedia's Smart contract:-

Smart contracts are computer protocols that facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract, or that make a contractual clause unnecessary. Smart contracts usually also have a user interface and often emulate the logic of contractual clauses.

The Wikipedia 'Ethereum' page references Ethereum, a Virtual Currency, Enables Transactions That Rival Bitcoin’s by Nathaniel Popper (nytimes.com):-

A new virtual gold rush is underway. Even as Bitcoin, riven by internal divisions, has struggled, a rival virtual currency -- known as Ethereum -- has soared in value, climbing 1,000 percent over the last three months. [...] Since Bitcoin was invented, there have been many so-called alt-coins that have tried to improve on Bitcoin, but none have won the following of Ethereum.

I had already picked up the NYT article in News : 2016-03, but neglected to mention Popper. He first appeared in News : 2016-01:-

[Two] stories were by Nathaniel Popper, writing for NYT's DealBook. Popper is the author of 'Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money' (Harper, 2015).

That's enough for this post. Keywords: smart contracts, gold rush.

Bitcoin Deanonymization

How's it going with that 'online bitcoin course', last mentioned in Going Deeper into Bitcoin (March 2016)? At that time I wrote,

It took me exactly a week to work through the first two lectures. I'm sure that I won't be able to maintain this pace week after week, and I only skimmed the readings.

I've reached lecture six where I found an interesting image in '6.2 Overview of Bitcoin Deanonymization'. At about 11:40 into the video, the following chart is shown.

A similar chart can be found in the paper A Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterizing Payments Among Men with No Names Sarah Meiklejohn et al. The caption there (p.9) says,

Figure 6: A visualization of the user network. The area of the cluster represents the external incoming value; i.e., the bitcoins received from other clusters but not itself, and for an edge to appear between two nodes there must have been at least 200 transactions between them. The nodes are colored by category: blue nodes are mining pools; orange are fixed-rate exchanges; green are wallets; red are vendors; purple are (bank) exchanges; brown are gambling; pink are investment schemes; and grey are uncategorized.

Also interesting -- to me, at least -- are the 16 bitcoin services listed in the chart:-

bitcoin.de, bitcoinica, bitmit, bitpay, bitstamp, btc-e, deepbit, gibse, instawallet, mtgox, mybitcoin, okpay, ozcoin, satoshi btc dice, silk road, slush

Since few of those are household names, I'll look at them in another post.

The MIT Connection

Adsense is everywhere. A few days ago I was working on a different topic when Google served an ad for bitcoin. I followed it and received something about an MIT white paper. Going further required me to enter an email address and since the ad promised only an 'excerpt' of the document, I stopped there. Afterwards I started to wonder if I could locate the original document. Using the obvious search terms I discovered Enigma (enigma.media.mit.edu).

Enigma is a decentralized cloud platform with guaranteed privacy. Private data is stored, shared and analyzed without ever being fully revealed to any party. Secure multi-party computation, empowered by the blockchain, is the magical technology behind it. [...] Want to dive in the technical details? See our whitepaper!

Sounds interesting, but first I wanted to look into the MIT Media Lab, a group whose name pops up repeatedly in bitcoin discussions. More search terms led to The Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative.

The goal of the Media Lab Digital Currency initiative is to bring together global experts in areas ranging from cryptography, to economics, to privacy, to distributed systems, to take on this important new area of research.

Anything else of interest from MIT? There's the MIT Bitcoin Club (bitcoin.mit.edu; 'Come discover Bitcoin!').

We believe Bitcoin has the potential to be not just a digital currency, but the future of money. While it is still in the early stages, we see Bitcoin as a protocol or platform on which financial and non-financial transactions can be conducted and verified as part of a global public ledger. Bitcoin lies at the intersection of several important academic research areas, including cryptography, distributed computing, graph theory, finance, and economics. The MIT Bitcoin Club seeks to provide forums where Bitcoin-related ideas, projects, programs, events, and businesses can be studied, discussed, and developed. Through club activities, we seek to increase awareness and use of Bitcoin within and beyond the MIT community.

There are also several recent stories on MIT's $900k Bitcoin Developer Fund (28 March 2016; coindesk.com).

MIT announced today it has raised $900,000 to fund the work of three bitcoin developers. The Bitcoin Developer Fund, backed by venture capitalist Fred Wilson, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and others is intended to give the three bitcoin coders working to resolve the block-size debate and other similar technical challenges an academic platform from which to work.

These days $900K doesn't buy much development time ('the money will cover salaries, travel and support of bitcoin protocol development efforts'), but with bitcoin evolving so quickly, short time frames are probably best.

Lightning, Malleability, Getting Hammered

The previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2016-04, included an obvious follow-up.

The most repeated stories involved a couple of products. The first product was something called 'lightning'. [...] Since neither story explained what 'lightning' is, I'll pursue that in a future post.

The obvious search parameters lead to the product's home page (the term 'service' would be more accurate): Lightning Network, 'Scalable, Instant Bitcoin/Blockchain Transactions', explained with a 55 minute video. The site's 'How it Works' page explains,

The Lightning Network is dependent upon the underlying technology of the blockchain. By using real Bitcoin/blockchain transactions and using its native smart-contract scripting language, it is possible to create a secure network of participants which are able to transact at high volume and high speed.

Let's go back a year, to Could the Bitcoin Lightning Network Solve Blockchain Scalability? (coindesk.com; March 2015):-

The blockchain's increasing size continues to raise concerns about its ability to accommodate transaction growth. But, could a decentralised system where transactions are sent over a network of off-blockchain micropayment channels solve the ledger's scalability problems? Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja, the developers behind the Bitcoin Lightning Network, think so.

That article points to a (much-referenced) white paper, the lightning-network paper-DRAFT-0.5.pdf:-

Abstract: • The bitcoin protocol can encompass the global financial transaction volume in all electronic payment systems today, without a single custodial 3rd party holding funds or requiring participants to have any more than a computer on a home broadband connection. A decentralized system is proposed whereby transactions are sent over a network of micropayment channels (a.k.a. payment channels or transaction channels) whose transfer of value occurs off-blockchain. If Bitcoin transactions can be signed with a new sighash type which addresses malleability, these transfers may occur between untrusted parties along the transfer route by contracts which are enforceable via broadcast over the bitcoin blockchain in the event of uncooperative or hostile participants, through a series of decrementing timelocks.

Malleability?

simple.wikipedia.org: • Malleability is the ability of a metal to be hammered into thin sheets. Gold and silver are highly malleable. When a piece of hot iron is hammered it takes the shape of a sheet. The property is not seen in non-metals.

Bitcoin malleability? From bitcoin.org/en/glossary, Transaction Malleability, Mutability:-

The ability of someone to change (mutate) unconfirmed transactions without making them invalid, which changes the transaction’s txid, making child transactions invalid.

I think I get it. Imagine the blockchain getting hammered. It turns out this happened last year; The Who, What, Why and How of the Ongoing Transaction Malleability Attack (bitcoinmagazine.com; October 2015):-

For the past several days, the Bitcoin network has been plagued by a so-called “transaction malleability attack.” Bitcoin users have experienced a number of annoyances, causing confusion and frustration. And while the transaction malleability issue is well-known and has plagued the Bitcoin network before, to many it is still unclear what it is, why it is a problem, who is causing the attack right now, and what can be done about it.

That's good to know, but I'm getting off track. Malleability might be an issue, but there are more fundamental concerns. From Debunking the 11 Most Stubborn Lightning Network Myths (bitcoinmagazine.com; October 2015, a week after the previous link -- a coincidence?):-

Earlier this year, [Poon & Dryja] released the Lightning Network white paper. In it they theorize how a layer on top of the Bitcoin blockchain can allow for instant and cheap bitcoin transactions, while vastly improving its scalability. As a result of the block-size limit debate, the Lightning Network has been getting a lot of attention lately. But, unfortunately, wild myths have started to dominate the discourse. Suddenly thrown in the middle of a long-lasting conflict of visions, Poon and Dryja's concept is hailed both as the great savior solving all of Bitcoin's problems – and as a source of deep corruption within Bitcoin's development community. [...]
• Myth #1: Core developers are crippling Bitcoin to force users onto the Lightning Network.
• Myth #2: There is no conflict of interest for the Core developers employed by Blockstream.
[...]
• Myth #11: The Lightning Network is urgently needed.

That's enough for now. I might not know how Lightning works in detail, but I know enough to understand that it's controversial. I'll let the controversies play out and come back to the subject if its evolution merits a deeper look.