Bitcoin News

CME Group to Launch Bitcoin Options in 2020

A contributing factor to Bitcoin’s meteoric price rise in late 2017 was the hype surrounding Bitcoin futures. Both the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Chicago Board of Exchange (CBOE) began offering Bitcoin futures contracts in late 2017. That enhanced ability to trade Bitcoin made huge waves and helped to establish the fact that Bitcoin was breaking into the financial mainstream. But with Bitcoin’s price collapse in early 2018, interest in futures began to fade. CBOE dropped out of the [...]

October 14, 2019 By
Read more...

What’s the Best-Performing Asset of 2019? Bitcoin

The Bitcoin ecosystem contains a funny mix of bulls and bears. For every person who thinks that Bitcoin will hit $100,000 by the end of the year you probably have two or three who think that it will sink below $1,000. Yet despite the bearishness of many on Wall Street who think that Bitcoin is much ado about nothing, Bitcoin continues to make progress both as a payment system and as an investment asset. Everyone remembers the Bitcoin “bubble” of [...]

October 10, 2019 By
Read more...

Ohio Suspends Bitcoin Tax Payments

A surefire way to ensure the continued adoption of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as methods of payment is for governments to accept them as payment for taxes. While many governments have been averse to accepting Bitcoin as a method of payment, some governments have attempted to break new ground by accepting Bitcoin. Among them is the state of Ohio, probably the best known adopter of Bitcoin. Its state treasury has accepted Bitcoin as a payment for taxation, with online retailer [...]

October 7, 2019 By
Read more...

Libra Forcing Central Banks to Move on Digital Currencies, But Will Consumers Adopt Them?

By now we all know that the Chinese government has been hard at work trying to create its own digital currency. And the creation of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency has given the Chinese a greater urgency to complete their project. But it isn’t just the Chinese who are feeling the pressure. Central bankers and regulators around the world are questioning Facebook, but that questioning has as much to do with their desire to get their own projects off the ground [...]

October 3, 2019 By
Read more...

Is Cryptocurrency Privacy a Thing of the Past?

One of the the reasons so many people decided to use and invest in Bitcoin was the private nature of the cryptocurrency. With Bitcoin addresses consisting of a series of numbers and letters, people could transfer money to and fro without anyone knowing who was on the other end of a transaction. Governments hate having that happen, however, and have begun to enforce existing know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) laws to the cryptocurrency sphere. Will that [...]

September 30, 2019 By
Read more...

Facebook’s Libra Fully in China’s Crosshairs While Bitcoin Ignored

The People’s Bank of China is apparently plowing full steam ahead in developing its own digital currency and it sees Libra, not Bitcoin, as its primary competition. That’s indicative of the buzz that Libra has among government officials who are involved in the cryptocurrency arena. But just because Libra is the target doesn’t mean that Bitcoin has gone by the wayside. Chinese officials trying to hype their upcoming digital currency are talking up the advantages of the digital yuan versus [...]

September 26, 2019 By
Read more...

Petro: The Cryptocurrency That Just Won’t Die

If you’ve been wondering what happened to Venezuela’s petro cryptocurrency, you’re probably one of the only ones. The cryptocurrency, much hyped by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, was slated for disaster almost from the beginning. Supposedly backed by oil reserves, Maduro had to force the cryptocurrency onto Venezuelan government employees in order to get it to achieve circulation. And now nearly two years after its introduction it still isn’t on anyone’s radar screen. That hasn’t kept Maduro from pushing the petro. [...]

September 23, 2019 By
Read more...

What Effect Would Negative Interest Rates Have on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency?

The United States is nearly alone among major world central banks in not moving towards negative interest rates. That zero lower bound remains a lower bound. But in the event of another financial crisis, might the Fed decide to push rates below zero, just like the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have done? And if so, what effect would that have on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency? One type of cryptocurrency with rising popularity are stablecoins. These coins are [...]

September 19, 2019 By
Read more...

Just How Secure Are Cryptocurrency Transactions?

One of the highlights of Bitcoin when it was first introduced was the relative anonymity with which Bitcoin users could buy, sell, and trade Bitcoin. While all transactions are recorded on the blockchain, they merely record which addresses sent Bitcoin where, with no one being able to tie a single address to an individual person. And with the ability to create multiple addresses to hold Bitcoin, users could effectively anonymize their transactions. The ability to continue doing that has been [...]

September 16, 2019 By
Read more...

China Going Full Steam Ahead With Cryptocurrency Plans

According to Chinese sources, the People’s Bank of China is pulling out all the stops in an effort to develop its own digital currency. In the aftermath of a crackdown on cryptocurrency trading and cryptocurrency mining, many analysts thought that the country was intent on controlling the digital currency space within its borders, although it was unclear whether the country was intent on banning cryptocurrency or merely putting a stop to private cryptocurrency until it could develop its own. [...]

September 12, 2019 By
Read more...