April Fool!

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Bitcoin in the News : 2017-02 More++

Am I constrained by a pattern here? In the previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2017-02 Price, I wrote,

For the third consecutive month I'm practically forced to start Bitcoin in the News with a post about the preceding month's price.

In addition to that, my second post for February, Bitcoin in the News : 2017-01 More++, concluded,

Were there any other new stories in the bitcoin space that grabbed everyone's attention [last month]? No, there weren't. I did, however, pick up on one theme : how well bitcoin is accepted by national authorities. Here is a list of stories in chronological order.

I could say exactly the same thing this month. Here's the list:-

• 2017-02-01: India Assaults Cash Again, 100% Fine For Cash Use Will Boost Bitcoin Price (cointelegraph.com)
• 2017-02-03: Why Venezuela's Currency Crisis Is A Case Study For Bitcoin (forbes.com)
• 2017-02-09: Bitcoin is tanking after Chinese exchanges block withdrawals (businessinsider.com)
• 2017-02-09: Iran Stops Using US Dollar, Could Become Next Major Bitcoin Market (cointelegraph.com)
• 2017-02-12: Bitcoin Or Bust: Taking British Banking Out Of Exchanges (forbes.com)
• 2017-02-12: The Philippines Officially Legitimize Bitcoin as Payment Method (cointelegraph.com)
• 2017-02-15: Bitcoin Conquers Morocco As Underground Crypto Bazaar is Flourishing (cointelegraph.com)
• 2017-02-18: Bitcoin Price in Tunisia 20% Higher Than in the US, Due to Capital Controls: Bitcoin Entrepreneur (cointelegraph.com)
• 2017-02-21: Has Trump Made Mexico the Next Hotspot for Bitcoin? (nasdaq.com)

Still following last month's pattern: 'Short takes: Things I learned from this month's news exercise.'

• 2017-02-05: Top 5 Bitcoin Communities (themerkle.com)
• 2017-02-05: Long-Term Indicators of Bitcoin: Transactions, Hashrate & More (cryptocoinsnews.com)
• 2017-02-12: Are Bitcoin Traders Planning for an ETF Approval? (coindesk.com; This topic was one of the most popular in February)

And again: 'And that's a wrap. See you again at the beginning of March! April!' Cookie cutter blogging, here I am...

Bitcoin in the News : 2017-02 Price

For the third consecutive month I'm practically forced to start Bitcoin in the News with a post about the preceding month's price; see 2017-01 Price for last month.

Bitcoin Price Index

The chart from Cointelegraph.com shows the price crossing USD $1000 at the beginning of the month, dropping below that psychological level to a local low on 10 February, then rising to nearly $1200 by the end of the month. A number of articles from the same source attempt to provide an explanation. Once again, the single most dominant reason is *China*.

• 2017-02-01: Bitcoin Price Surpasses $1000 in China and South Korea, Again
• 2017-02-09: Bitcoin Price Falls 9% Overnight As Two Chinese Exchanges Stop Withdrawals
• 2017-02-15: Bitcoin Price 30-Day Moving Average At Highest Ever
• 2017-03-02: Bitcoin Price Breaks $1228 All-Time High Again With ETF Nearing

The phrase 'ETF Nearing' expands to 'the industry’s optimism towards the Winklevoss twin’s Bitcoin ETF approval on March 11'. With that in mind, I'm almost certain that I'll be doing a post next month for 2017-03 Price.

Bitcoin in the News : 2017-01 More++

After the topic in the previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2017-01 Price, were there any other new stories in the bitcoin space that grabbed everyone's attention in January? No, there weren't. I did, however, pick up on one theme : how well bitcoin is accepted by national authorities. Here is a list of stories in chronological order.

• 2016-12-31: Superintendencia de Sociedades Bans Bitcoin in Colombia (newsbtc.com) • 'The news was announced few days before the new year by the country’s regulatory agency -- Superintendency of Corporations'
• 2017-01-07: Could bitcoin be the solution to governments' "war on cash"? (qz.com) • 'Cash has the advantages of being accessible, inclusive, and largely surveillance-free. It also has a tendency to leak into unexpected places, which makes governments uncomfortable. They say killing off cash plugs the leaks, and besides, it’s technological progress.'
• 2017-01-18: Nigeria's Central Bank is warning local banks against trading in bitcoins and other digital currencies. (qz.com) • 'While China appears to be worried about bitcoin being used to avoid the country’s capital controls, for its part, CBN [Central Bank of Nigeria] cites the possibility of exploitation by criminals and terrorists.'
• 2017-01-26: Venezuelan authorities arrest 4 bitcoin miners (marketwatch.com) • 'They were charged with cyberfraud and stealing electricity' (but the charge of cyberfraud isn't explained in the story).
• 2017-01-26: Stricter Bitcoin Regulation, Ban on Mixers Recommended at Interpol, Europol Conference (bitcoinmagazine.com) • 'It appears the global fight against Bitcoin money laundering has turned up a notch.'
• 2017-01-29: Bitcoin wallets get a key approval in Switzerland (engadget.com) • 'One company can hold your digital currency without having to serve as a bank.'

Would you trust your retirement savings to bitcoin? Some people would. I bet that those who would are nowhere near retirement age.

• 2017-01-20: Wall Street Journal features Revolutionary Retirement Strategy From Bitcoin IRA and Reports Bitcoin up 123% in 2016 (PRNewswire -> finance.yahoo.com) • 'BitcoinIRA.com, the first and only bitcoin-based retirement investment company, today announced the completion of a new milestone.'
• 2017-01-25: Bitcoin Price Fluctuations Taken Into Account When Saving For Bitcoin-Funded Retirement (cointelegraph.com) • 'What are the odds that Bitcoin can be adapted to serve social purposes, namely reshaping national welfare systems?'

Short takes: Things I learned from this month's news exercise.

• 2017-01-10: What Is One Of The World's Largest Derivatives Exchanges Doing With Bitcoin? (forbes.com) • 'CME Group started more than a century ago in Chicago as a place where farmers could lock in prices for their crops. Today, its exchanges -- CME, CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade), NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange) and COMEX (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) -- cover every major asset class, such as metals and energy and U.S. Treasury bonds. And now it’s making a foray into bitcoin. This past November, CME launched both a once-a-day bitcoin reference rate (BRR) and a bitcoin real-time index (BRTI) that updates every second.'
  
  
• 2017-01-16; High-Speed Traders Are Taking Over Bitcoin • 'The reality is that professionals armed with cutting-edge technology now drive as much as 80 percent of bitcoin trading, mimicking strategies honed by some of the biggest players on Wall Street.'
  
  
• 2017-01-18: Bitcoin is mostly traded in China (businessinsider.com) • 'From less than a 10% share in January 2012, the yuan now makes up nearly 100% of all bitcoin trading.'
  
  
• 2017-01-25: Bitseed Review - A Plug & Play Full Bitcoin Node (99bitcoins.com) • 'Bitseed – a product that claims to be a "plug n play" node for the average user. Just plug it into your router at home and you are instantly a part of the Bitcoin network by running your own personal node. Of course you can always use your personal computer for this but then you’d have to give away a large chunk of space from your hard drive in order to download the Blockchain to your machine.'

And that's a wrap. See you again at the beginning of March!

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.

Bitcoin in the News : 2016-12 More++

My previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2016-12 Price, documented the price rise in December. What else was newsworthy? A year ago, in Bitcoin in the News : 2015-12, I wrote,

December is the month when journalists look back at the major stories of the waning year. It's also the month when they look forward to imagine what the coming year will bring.

This is no less true now than it was then, and the first article that bubbles to the surface is 2017: The Second Era of Bitcoin Begins (coindesk.com). Unfortunately, the article doesn't explain its title, unless 'there can be only one bitcoin' is somehow indicative of an era. It does, however, lead to a slew of articles under the title

• 2016 Review News (also coindesk.com; '2nd annual CoinDesk Year in Review')

Of the 50 linked stories, only 11 have the word 'bitcoin' in the title, while 33 have the word 'blockchain', which is the real news of 2016/2017. When has there been so much excitement about a data structure?

Another article, Bitcoin Price Prediction for 2017: 6 Major Events to Impact Bitcoin Value (cointelegraph.com), has in fact three bullets:-

• Segwit, Lightning, Tumblebit ['all scalability solutions initially introduced to facilitate larger amounts of transactions']
• Approval of Bitcoin ETFs
• Financial crash and economic instability

Yet another article, Roger Ver: 2017 Will Be the Best Year for Bitcoin, offers an opinion that echoes the previous list.

• Bitcoin ETF in 2017?
• Blocksize challenges
• Security issues
• Bitcoin will regulate governments ['it will be Bitcoin that regulates governments, not the other way around']

Ver, 'owner of Bitcoin.com', which might make him less than objective on the subject, 'holds the belief that there is good reason to think that 2017 will be the best year for bitcoin'. I wonder what the owner of Blockchain.com is saying.

Bitcoin in the News : 2016-12 Price

The big bitcoin news of the last month of 2016 was a massive price rise. I counted four stories from one source alone (Business Insider : uk.businessinsider.com).

2016-12-22: Bitcoin is surging

The price of digital currency bitcoin continues to surge on Thursday, up over 5% against the dollar by mid-morning in London. The digital currency broke through $800 a bitcoin on Wednesday and ended the day at $826.29.

2016-12-27: Bitcoin is soaring

Bitcoin is soaring as traders return to work after the extended Christmas break. The cryptocurrency is trading up 3% to more than $929 and is at its best level in three years.

2016-12-28: Bitcoin is still storming higher

Bitcoin's incredible rally continues on Wednesday, up close to 3% against the dollar in early trade in London. The digital currency is up 2.8% to $958.52. Bitcoin has shot up over $150 over the last week, with little obvious spur for the price rise. Bitcoin is now at its highest level since November 2013 when it reached $1000.

2016-12-30: China is behind the latest bitcoin craze

Bitcoin had a great 2016. The cryptocurrency rallied 120% to $952, threatening to break the $1,000 mark for the first time since 2013. While bitcoin has seen a consistent bid throughout the year, its 57% gain (in US dollar terms) over the past three months has been particularly impressive. • So what's behind the move? • China.

China is as good a guess as any, but it's still just a guess. The last time I did a post in price action was Bitcoin in the News : 2016-06 Price (July 2016). Like so many Yahoo services, the charting service I used for that post has declined in quality. Here's what I get now for the month of December.

BTCUSD=X Interactive Stock Chart - Yahoo Finance

Prices before 12 December (which gives BTC = 778 USD) are marked 'N/A'. The peak for the month shows about 975 USD. Since the end of December, the price has come down considerably, but I'll look at that in the news for January 2017.