A number of Bitcoin companies and miners have agreed to run code that will implement a hard-forking increase to the non-witness data in blocks roughly three months after the activation of Segregated Witness (SegWit). According to some of its proponents, the proposal, known as SegWit2x, is said to be the only viable solution to the Bitcoin scaling debate.

However, agreeing to initiate a hard fork without knowing how speculators will react to such a change comes with risks. If there is not full support for the hard fork from bitcoin holders, the end result could be a split of Bitcoin into two separate cryptocurrency networks, which could cause extreme brand confusion among the general public (depending on the severity of the split).

In addition to the potential risks of a permanent split of the community, SegWit2x also ignores tools that could be used to get the intended benefits of this particular hard-forking increase to capacity without the possibility of a network split.

Perhaps most troubling, SegWit2x ignores the reasons as to why Bitcoin is useful in the first place.

According to a recent study by researchers from the University of Tulsa and Tel Aviv University, the massive increase in the bitcoin price in late 2013 was caused by suspicious trading activity on the now-defunct Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange. The study, which is titled “Price Manipulation in the Bitcoin Ecosystem,” indicates that 600,000 bitcoins were acquired by agents who did not pay for them, and the bitcoin price rose by an average of $20 on days when the suspicious trading activity took place.

“Based on rigorous analysis with extensive robustness checks, we conclude that the suspicious trading activity caused the unprecedented spike in the USD-BTC exchange rate in late 2013, when the rate jumped from around $150 to more than $1,000 in two months,” the study states.

At the center of the study is the infamous Willy bot that was first publicized on a Wordpress blog back in May of 2014.

The paper details the data used for the study, identifies the suspicious trading activity and notes that these sorts of manipulative practices may still be possible today, especially in the altcoin markets.

Although pundits have proclaimed bitcoin dead on more than 100 separate occasions, the digital asset continues to be one of the best performing assets on a year-to-year basis. While bitcoin experienced a bear market in 2014, that is the only down year in its entire history. Bitcoin is much more volatile than a traditional investment, but it has proven itself over the long term, recently reaching all-time highs.

Let’s take a closer look at how bitcoin has compared to other assets over the past few years.

At the end of this month of July, during several days, the Bitcoin network might go through one of the most contentious changes in its history. (Read more about it here). There are several competing proposed changes that could lead to a Hardfork of Bitcoin. (Read about the important dates here). At Bity we are already preparing for this.

AlphaBay, the most popular market on the dark net, has been offline since July 4. Since the administrators of the website failed to issue an official statement about the current issues, many users are suspecting an exit scam. The absence of AlphaBay has since resulted in users looking for alternative underground marketplaces.

Mr Taylor also suggested that cash payments should be phased-out.
He said cash jobs such as window cleaning and decorating were worth up to £6bn a year and many were untaxed - something Mr Taylor says should be addressed.
Mr Taylor said he did not want to ban cash payments outright, but hoped, over time, the increasing popularity of transaction platforms such as PayPal and Worldpay would see a shift from cash-in-hand work.
“In a few years time as we move to a more cashless economy, self employed people would be paid cashlessly - like your window cleaner. At the same time they can pay taxes and save for their pension,” he said.
“Most people who do pay for self-employed labour would like to know that that person is paying their taxes.”

Cryptocurrencies need to be regulated or they risk going out of control as more people invest in these digital assets, the head of a major Chinese bitcoin exchange platform warned on Tuesday.

Bitcoin and ethereum, two popular cryptocurrencies, have seen rapid price swings in recent months. In May, a 19 percent price fall for bitcoin saw nearly $4 billion in value wiped off. Last month, the price of ethereum crashed as low as 10 cents from around $319 in about a second on the GDAX cryptocurrency exchange. Because there’s bullishness in the market, some predict bitcoin’s price to soar as high as $100,000 in a decade.

“I think regulation is much needed for this new asset class because otherwise it’ll run amok from society,” Bobby Lee, CEO of exchange BTCC, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“But the challenge is how to craft the rules around this new technology,” he said at the sidelines of the Rise conference in Hong Kong. Lee added, “I think it’s taking the lawmakers and regulators some time to wrap their minds around it, and to come up with the appropriate rules and laws to govern companies, how we do business, to govern individuals (and) how people conduct business online.”

TOKYO — The head of the failed Japan-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges of embezzlement and data manipulation.

France-born Mark Karpeles said he had tried to save the bankrupted exchange by using a kind of automated computer software called a “Willy bot,” also described as an “obligation exchange,” to help cover its rising debts by pushing bitcoin values higher.

“I am innocent of all the charges,” he said. “I did not in any way dishonestly manipulate data or misuse the customers’ money,” he said.

Mt. Gox shut down in February 2014, saying it had gone bankrupt after losing about 850,000 bitcoins, possibly to hackers.

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Speaking after the hearing, Karpeles said he was not guilty and that he was still analyzing data, trying to track down the missing bitcoins.

He said the main cause of the bankruptcy was “hacking of bitcoins by outsiders.”

If anyone in the blockchain and cryptocurrency community was still wondering if regulators are aware of ICOs (initial coin offerings), we just got an answer. Israel’s chief financial watchdog gave a very hard review of everyone’s favorite new crowdfunding method in a speech to the financial industry in Tel Aviv about an hour ago. Prof. Shmuel Hauser, Head of the Israeli Securities Authority, said (translated by Finance Magnates):

An unknown cryptocurrency trader turned $55 million of paper wealth into $283 million in just over a month.

The only clue about this person or persons, beyond a virtual wallet with the identification code 0x00A651D43B6e209F5Ada45A35F92EFC0De3A5184, surfaced on a June 11 Instagram posting, in Bahasa, in which he or she (or they) (or somebody posing as them) boasted about the 413 per cent profit accumulated earlier this year from ether, the digital money of the Ethereum blockchain.

A little-known, newly established hedge fund is seeking to raise $200m to invest in cryptocurrencies, according to regulatory filings.

The bid by Cryptocurrency Fund LP to raise the money was revealed in a Form D submission to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), dated July 10. The funding effort has a minimum contribution threshold of $100,000 from accredited investors, who have at least $5m net worth.

The filing represents the latest bid to attract large-scale investors to funds built around cryptocurrency markets. In recent weeks, several existing investors in the space have moved to build similar efforts, including a $100m bid to build an ICO-focused fund that has raised roughly a third of that amount to date.

Yet in the case of Cryptocurrency Fund LP, the big-ticket fundraise objective stands in contrast to the relatively scarce amount of available information about the company.

BlackRock Inc’s (BLK.N) global chief investment strategist on Tuesday suggested that loose monetary policy may have aided speculation in digital currencies like bitcoin, but he said the risk to the broader financial system appears limited.

The strategist, Richard Turnill, said it might be possible to view price movements in blockchain-based cryptocurrencies as influenced by the ultra-easy monetary policies put in place by central banks after the 2007-2009 global financial crisis.

But sharp price gains in cryptocurrencies may be a sign of excess and have led some investors to call the market a bubble.

“I look at the charts, and to me that looks pretty scary,” Turnill said at a media briefing in New York.

One ether token hit an interday low of $192.22, according to industry and price tracking website Coinmarketcap, which takes into account the price on several exchanges.
The cryptocurrency has now fallen more than 50 percent since registering all-time highs of over $400 in early June.

Garza will formerly plead guilty to wire fraud on 20th July 2017 at the federal courthouse in Hartford, Connecticut.

To keep affected parties up-to-date, Assistant United States Attorney John Pierpont will be hosting a conference call on Friday, 14th July at 10AM. Pierpont will brief attendees on the terms of Garza’s plea deal, the sentencing process, and any other questions about the case and court system in general.

Ah, those were the days, when you could steal a bit of a company’s server power and mine some valuable bitcoin all for yourself.
During a presentation at a conference last week, British cybersecurity experts had some tales to tell of surreptitious and sometimes illegal bitcoin mining in the time before huge computing power was required to turn a profit at the activity. In January 2015 the British cybersecurity firm Darktrace was called to investigate a possible intrusion in the systems of an Italian bank. Darktrace uses artificial intelligence techniques to detect aberrations in computer systems.
The firm discovered streams of data were being transmitted from one of the bank’s servers to a European crime syndicate, Dave Palmer, director of technology at Darktrace, told the Research and Applied AI Summit in London July 30. “It was a fairly well known European criminal botnet,” said Palmer, director of technology at Darktrace. “The data was not customer data; it turned out to be a fairly buggy implementation of bitcoin mining software.”

Authorities in Belgium have grown increasingly concerned about firearm importation. Specifically concerned about weapons entering the country through the postal service and illegal online trade. This elevated concern follows the Flemish Peace Institute’s recent study on illegal firearm trade in Belgium.
One news site reported that the general concern started after an event in 2016. They referred to the case of a Belgian computer scientist who met a US darknet firearms vendor/UC. He “easily” ordered an AK, a Glock, ammunition, and a silencer from said vendor. The computer scientist successfully ordered the guns and illegal ammo. Then law enforcement officers in Belgium caught the buyer when the package landed.
The Flemish Peace Institute’s study likely drove the majority of the current discussion though, many news headlines revealed. One of the more popular results focused on the drastic increase in illegal weapons in Belgium. The Institute found that nearly 25 percent of the weapons in the country were illegal. And they were guns that civilians never legally owned or needed such as fully “automatic weapons with silencers and night vision.”

I was actually today at my postal office in Austria, and saw that they are selling Bitcoin I was pretty confused since when now I see this article.

TOKYO – Bic Camera will allow payments in bitcoin at all locations throughout Japan as early as this month, looking to provide more options for foreign and domestic shoppers.

The Japanese electronics retailer had begun accepting the cryptocurrency at certain Tokyo stores starting in April with the help of the Japanese bitcoin exchange bitFlyer. The more than expected popularity of this option prompted Bic Camera to expand the system to the rest of its locations, the company says.

Since bitcoin is used by many Japanese consumers, not just foreign visitors, Bic Camera will also start taking the virtual currency at some outposts of its subsidiary Kojima, which are typically found in the suburbs.