Bitcoin Tracker | Week 55
Bitcoin ended 2014 on something of a down note, and so far it doesn’t look like 2015 is going all that much better.
Bitcoin dropped below 300 this week to 268.7 on Jan. 6, 2015 – down from 307.94 last week according to the PYMNTS.com Bitcoin Price index. The measurements according to the PYMNTS.com Bitcoin Volatility Index are inline with the crypto currency’s turbulent start.
After the tough start to 2015, PYMNTS.com checked in with Dr. David Evans, the chairman of the Global Economics Group to see if the bitcoin bubble had burst. Though Evans has been a longtime believer in the bitcoin bubble – having declared from the beginning of bitcoin that the prices were bubbly – when asked if it had burst, he said he didn’t think that we were there yet.
Just because the bubble hasn’t totally burst yet, it isn’t necessarily good news for bitcoin, according to Evans. When asked what the recent prices mean for bitcoin as a currency, Evans assuredly noted “it kills any chance that bitcoin could be a mainstream currency. No one wants to hold a currency that has that great a risk of depreciating in value. Most people who put money in bitcoin wallets in 2014 and didn’t spend it instantly took a hit. It is dead, let me repeat, dead, as a mainstream currency.”
As always, if you have any news you’d like to share, please send it our way at contactus@pymnts.com.
On the Plus Side …
Had a good experience with a cab driver, give him a tip in bitcoin now with BitPay and help him spread the word about bitcoin. A new bitcoin wallet from Circle will now let Android users pay with bitcoin instores, but only at one of the 44,000 stores that accept bitcoin and from that group, just a small fraction that accepts NFC. And the Winkelvoss twins have launched their exchange traded fund when they applied in 2015 to sell 1 million shares.
- Jan. 6, 2015 – Circle’s Bitcoin wallet now lets users to pay in-store with bitcoins using the Circle mobile app, as long as users have and Android smartphone with an NFC chip and the retailer accepts bitcoin and has a compatible NFC POS system. Odds are that only a small number of purchases are happening there.
- Jan. 6, 2015 – BitPay expanded its open source Web and mobile bitcoin wallet to Windows phones.
- Jan. 5, 2015 – ChangeTip, a bitcoin micropayment startup, added a new feature that lets users receive tips without being linked to a social media account. One Time Tip Link lets registered users to send bitcoin tips to a person’s email address or via Skype.
- Jan. 1, 2015 – Bitcoin derivatives exchange BitMEX announced that after the 5th of January they will publish a 30-day bitcoin volatility index or a ‘fear index’.
- Jan. 1, 2015 – The Winklevoss Bitcoin Fund, an exchange-traded fund formerly filed for shares on the Nasdaq.
On the Dark Side …
Not even a year from the mysterious closing of Mt. Gox and another marketplace closed suddenly and $5 million worth of bitcoin were stolen from Bitstamp. And speaking of Mt. Gox, authorities determined that they think it was an inside job and not due to a cyberattack as previously believed. Now, rather than learning to code, you may learn to hack with Lizard Squad all while paying with bitcoin.
- Jan. 7, 2015 – “Bitcoin Jesus,” Roger Ver, after renouncing his U.S. citizenship is now seemingly surprised that his birth country has refused to issue him a visa.
- Jan. 7, 2015 – If you dabbled with bitcoin and you pay taxes in the United States, get ready for a struggle with your taxes. Since bitcoin is considered a property by the IRS, you will have to determine the original value for each bitcoin that was used when you made a transaction and then the likely loss you incurred when the bitcoin was spent. That will have to be done each and every time for a transaction made in bitcoin.
- Jan. 6, 2015 – The U.K. and Slovenian based bitcoin exchange, Bitstaamp revealed that it went offline from a possible data breech that may have occurred on Jan. 4, when one of the operational wallets was compromised. $5 million worth of bitcoin was stolen.
- Jan.6, 2015 – The Bitcoin Foundation dismissed their global policy counsel, Jim Harper as the “policy aspect was more of a distraction and a drain on resources” than the Bitcoin Foundation could handle. Harper told The New York Times that in his experience, the foundation wasn’t an organization “that had a lot of focus and direction.”
- Jan. 5, 2015 – Bitcoin prices took a nosedive after the New Year, falling 17.2 percent in 72 hours from 311.05 on Friday to $257.61 on Sunday.
- Jan. 5, 2015 – The hacker group known as Lizard Squad has launched a new business venture that allows anyone to join their security-breaching ways for a low monthly cost. Not so surprisingly, they only take bitcoin as payment right now.
- Jan. 1, 2015 – The police now believe that the Mt. Gox Bitcoin theft was an inside job and that of the 650,000 missing bitcoins, only about 1 percent or 7,000 bitcoins were lost due to a cyberattack.
