Bitcoin

BITCOIN

A short introduction to bitcoin
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system and digital currency introduced as open source software in 2009 by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto. It is a cryptocurrency, so-called because it uses cryptography to control the creation and transfer of money. Users send payments by broadcasting digitally signed messages to the network. Participants known as miners verify and timestamp transactions into a shared public database called the block chain, for which they are rewarded with transaction fees and newly minted bitcoins. Conventionally "Bitcoin" capitalized refers to the technology and network whereas "bitcoins" lowercase refers to the currency itself. Bitcoins can be obtained by mining, trading or in exchange for products, services, or other currencies.

Bitcoin price analysis

Bitcoin price made a nice upside move above the $7,600 and $8,000 resistances against the US Dollar.

There is a crucial bullish trend line in place with support at $7,950 on the 4-hours chart of the BTC/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).

The pair is placed nicely in a bullish trend above the $8,000 and $7,700 support levels.

Bitcoin price completed a correction wave near $7,800 against the US Dollar. BTC/USD is resuming its upside move and it could break the $8,500 high to test $9,000

"Since the limit was introduced in 2010, there have been countless discussions on the necessity as well as the methods that would be used to increase this limit, and Bitcoin’s transaction processing capabilities with it. Those attempts have repeatedly been blocked by a small group of developers, and in recent years discussion of increasing the limit has been censored from some of Bitcoin’s largest discussion forums, all of which are moderated by the same individual, who posts using the handle Theymos. What is forbidden includes any discussion of code changes that propose increasing the limitation."

Bitcoin ETF (What experts think about a possible bitcoins ETF)

An Interesting Idea
Founder of Netcoins, Michael Vogel sees the possibility of a bitcoin ETF as “an interesting idea” even though he does not think that such is crucial to bitcoin’s long term success.

According to Vogel, many see an ETF approval as another step forward to legitimizing bitcoin in the eyes of Wall Street and the world of traditional finance because it would ultimately put bitcoin (as a trading instrument) in the hands of conventional traders. However, he believes that it would also denote a significant step forward in terms of the comfort level that regulators display around cryptocurrency, given the extreme hesitancy around past ETF applications.

“A large ETF would likely have a significant impact on bitcoin prices as well, not just due to trading volume but simply because of the volume of bitcoin that it would remove from the liquid trading market (because the BTC would need to be permanently held by the ETF corporation)”.