Digital Currencies incl NFT etc. 01; (Feb 14 - Apr 21)

[behappyalways]

Buffett: ‘Stay Away’ From Bitcoin
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/03/ ... ding_now_1

[iam802]

Buffett: ‘Stay Away’ From Bitcoin
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/03/ ... ding_now_1

There is definitely risk in Bitcoin.

At the same time, Buffet is not the best guy to talk to about tech stuffs. He avoid tech stocks for a very long time despite being a good friend of Bill

[behappyalways]

True.

I guess what he meant is that there is no central authority to back the bitcoin. For example a ten Singapore dollar note. It might have cost the govt 10 cents or less to make the note but it is 'backed' by the Singapore Govt.

[behappyalways]

Gold vs. bitcoin: An apocalyptic showdown
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014/03/ ... hpt=hp_bn1

[iam802]

[iam802]

In "This Matters Now,” Bill Miller, Chairman and CIO of Legg Mason Capital Management, discusses the merits of Bitcoin and why he is a personal investor. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's “Bloomberg Surveillance.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/potentia ... aFxRw.html

[iam802]

ETF fund for Bitcoin?

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were supposed to launch the first-ever publicly traded Bitcoin ETF.

They are now likely to be lapped by Barry Silbert’s SecondMarket.

The firm, whose Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT) is already the largest regulated private Bitcoin investment fund in the world, has begun taking steps to open their own publicly traded, over-the-counter Bitcoin ETF, with a projected launch date of Q4 2014.

Because the BIT already complies with FINRA statutes, it will be able to file to open the exchange on a much more accelerated timeline than the Winklevosses, Silbert told BI Thursday.

“The plan all along was to move the [Bitcoin Investment Trust] into the public market in a similar way to the Winklevosses,” he said. “But we’ve learned the route they’re taking takes many years to get approved, and there’s a high level of uncertainty when it will get done. [SecondMarket's process] does not require SEC approval.”

The Winklevosses did not respond to a request for comment.

Once online, anyone with a mainstream trading platform, like e-Trade or TD Ameritrade, will be able to buy shares in the fund, which is billed as a safe, regulated means for getting exposure to Bitcoin. Existing BIT customers who’ve had an account for at least 12 months will also automatically qualify.

The long-term goal, Silbert says, is to get the fund on NASDAQ, though he says that will likely not come for awhile.

Silbert is one of the most successful Bitcoin evangelist, and admits he’s playing a long game. He does not expect an immediate rush into the shares, given Bitcoin’s ongoing dramatic price fluctuations. But he says ETFs are key to tamping down those swings.

“I think we’re going to see volatility for the foreseeable future, given the fragmented nature of exchange markets and the low levels of liquidity,” he said. “Large purchaser sale orders can still move the market. I do think vehicles like this will help to reduce it, it will be bringing in larger sums of money, which will ultimately reduce supply of Bitcoin subject to volatility. [SecondMarket's] vehicle will not in itself help, but it will help as more vehicles do hit the market.”

...

[behappyalways]

Andy Xie has something to say about bitcoin

http://english.caixin.com/2014-03-20/100654231.html

[iam802]

Various Bitcoin startups should treat this as a lesson.

Though they could be learning from the great Wall Street...about 'where did the money goes' ?


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Mt. Gox says it found 200,000 bitcoins in 'forgotten' wallet

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/ ... 5N20140321

(Reuters) - Mt. Gox said on Friday it found 200,000 "forgotten" bitcoins on March 7, a week after the Tokyo-based digital currency exchange filed for bankruptcy protection, saying it lost nearly all the 850,000 bitcoins it held, worth some $500 million at today's prices.

Mt. Gox made the announcement on its website. Online sleuths had noticed around 200,000 bitcoins moving through the crypto-currency exchange after the bankruptcy filing.

The exchange, headed by 28-year-old Frenchman Mark Karpeles, said the bitcoins were found in an old-format online wallet which it had thought no longer held any bitcoins, but which it checked again after its bankruptcy filing.

"On March 7, 2014, MtGox Co., Ltd. confirmed that an old format wallet which was used prior to June 2011 held a balance of approximately 200,000 BTC," the statement said.

It added that "for security reasons" it moved the 200,000 bitcoins from online to offline wallets on March 14-15.

"These bitcoin movements, including the change in the manner in which these coins were stored, had been reported to the court and the supervisor by counsels," Mt. Gox said.

A lawyer representing the plaintiffs in a class action suit against the shuttered exchange disputed the claim that the bitcoins had been "forgotten" in a dormant wallet.

Many of Mt. Gox's 127,000 creditors, who feared they had lost their investments when the exchange filed for bankruptcy, are skeptical about what the exchange has said happened to the bitcoins it had. In its bankruptcy filing, Mt. Gox also said $28 million was "missing" from its Japanese bank accounts.

BITCOIN TRACKING

On Thursday, a U.S. judge in Chicago overseeing a class action against Mt. Gox revised a previous order, allowing some of the exchange's bitcoin movements to be tracked.

"Today in court we got relief ... specifically to track the 180,000 bitcoins, which we've been monitoring. Hours later, Mt. Gox claimed it 'found' these bitcoins ... it appears Mt. Gox realized we were close and decided to acknowledge that it owned these 180,000-200,000 bitcoins," Steven L. Woodrow, a partner at law firm Edelson, told Reuters in emailed comments.

Edelson is representing Illinois resident Gregory Greene, who proposed the class action over what he claims is a massive fraud. Mt. Gox blamed the loss of 750,000 bitcoins belonging to its customers and 100,000 of its own on hackers who attacked its software.

Bitcoin is bought and sold on a peer-to-peer network independent of central control. Its value soared last year, and the total worth of bitcoins is now about $7 billion.

BLOCKCHAIN EVIDENCE

In an interview on Friday, Woodrow said the claim that the newly discovered bitcoins had been in a long-dormant wallet was false, citing publicly visible information about the contents of Mt. Gox's bitcoin wallets, which can be viewed on the internet.

"The idea that there were 200,000 or 180,000 bitcoins in a single wallet that they just discovered which had been dormant for years that contained 180,000 bitcoins is undercut by plain evidence on the blockchain," Woodrow said.

The blockchain is a public ledger recording every movement of each bitcoin in existence. Entries to the blockchain are made automatically, as part of Bitcoin's software.

"On March 7th there's a transaction where transferred batches of bitcoins containing 40,000 and 50,000 each into a single address holding the 180,000."

Karpeles' lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Woodrow said the blockchain showed the 180,000 bitcoins were distributed in batches of 50 bitcoins each to separate wallets over a period of four days starting March 7.

"At no point was the bankruptcy Court in Dallas notified of this at all, despite Mr. Karpeles supposedly informing his lawyers about it on March 8th and Mt. Gox seeking Chapter 15 protection on the 10th," Woodrow said.

(Additional reporting by Tom Hals in Delaware and Emily Flitter in New York; Editing by Tom Brown) nL2N0MI1HN

[iam802]

Bitcoin Swaps Near Reality as Tera Creates Legal Framework

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-2 ... ework.html

Tera Group Inc. created a framework for buying and selling swaps linked to Bitcoin that would let investors hedge risk from trading the digital currency.

The firm announced today that it drafted a bilateral agreement that provides a legal template for trading Bitcoin swaps. Tera Group, based in Summit, New Jersey, is seeking clearance from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission so it can begin trading Bitcoin contracts on its swap-execution facility. Tera Group also said it’s handling a multimillion-dollar swap between two American institutions.

“We as a company are trying to bring some structure and some protocol to help the Bitcoin community,” Leonard Nuara, the president of Tera, said during a phone interview today. “It provides a tool for a natural hedge to get relief from the price changes in Bitcoin.”

Bitcoin’s closing price has swung between $534.71 and $951.39 this year after ending 2013 at $757.50, with volatility spurred by the collapse of the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox exchange, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index. The price was $578.55 at 5:58 p.m. New York time today.

Legal agreements like the one Tera Group created can spur derivatives trading by offering investors a template for structuring deals. The overall swaps market was spurred in the 1980s by another framework: the International Swaps & Derivatives Association’s master legal document, which is still in use today for customized trades that can’t be backed by clearinghouses.

Regulatory Riddle

Swaps let investors, companies and institutions exchange one kind of payment for another. Some use swaps to exchange principal and interest in one currency for the same in another currency. They can also be used to speculate on prices or to replicate the return on specific investments.

The regulation of Bitcoin and related derivatives is an unresolved question in many parts of the world. Even as regulators and investors struggle to grasp Bitcoin’s many uses - - including investment vehicle, payment-processing system and money-laundering tool -- they are now confronted with the additional complexities of an emerging derivatives market.

Tera Group is joining others in trying to create Bitcoin derivatives.

Failed Exchange

George Samman, a former Wall Street investment adviser who in May helped start a platform for betting on Bitcoin’s price swings, saw trading on his BTC.sx website grow to more than $35 million by Jan. 21. After the shutdown of Mt. Gox, BTC.sx suspended trading because it had to find another exchange partner for its customers.

At the CFTC, the top U.S. derivatives regulator, lawyers are considering if and how to oversee derivatives linked to Bitcoin and other digital currencies, two people briefed on its work said in February. The agency has been preparing an internal memo that examines the CFTC’s authority over digital currencies and how it might exercise those powers to regulate the markets, the people said.

Tera Group has provided information about its Bitcoin agreement to the CFTC and is in discussions with the regulatory agency, Nuara said in the phone interview. Tera hasn’t asked the CFTC to decide on approval by a certain date, he said.

“The infrastructure and regulatory protocols already exist in the conventional OTC swaps markets to support these hedging instruments,” Nuara said in a statement today. “Regulatory approval is crucial to the long-term growth of the market utilizing Bitcoin.”

A Commodity?

The CFTC is looking into whether Bitcoin and other virtual currencies meet the definition of a commodity under CFTC rules against manipulation, Mark Wetjen, acting CFTC chairman, said March 11 at a news conference in Boca Raton, Florida, after a speech at a Futures Industry Association meeting.

“The analysis hasn’t concluded, but I think people believe there is a pretty good argument that it would fit that definition, or there are at least arguments that it would,” he said. The agency is also looking at platforms that are seeking to offer derivatives tied to virtual currencies, he said.


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