Step by step, nobody can deny bitcoin is gaining traction within the financial industry.Even though Goldman Sachs does not yet have an institutional perspective on Bitcoin, according to TechCrunch, they do have several initiatives underway to get a handle on the phenomenon.Blythe Masters, an ex-JP Morgan executive with expertise in credit default swaps recently joined a startup that wants to integrate bitcoin with Wall Street.Her company called Digital Asset Holdings hopes to decrease settlement times and reduce fees via smart contracts.The 25th and longest serving SEC Chairman, Arthur Levitt, took an advisory position with well funded merchant processor BitPay.Levitt once said, “The intellectual firepower behind [bitcoin] enterprises is astonishing”.His ex-colleagues over at the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) reported over 5,000 people, mostly from China, watched their webcast on bitcoin.The CFTC has made it clear that bitcoin falls under its jurisdiction and it actively regulates the bitcoin derivates market.

Two very prominent members of the financial community, American Express CEO and Chairman, Kenneth Chenault and ex-Citigroup CEO, Vikram Pandit both believe bitcoin has a future in global finance.So it was no surprise that Coinbase announced support for the Financial Information eXchange protocol (FIX) on the Coinbase Exchange.This is yet another step that gives bitcoin more exposure to mainstream finance.Bitcoin now joins other important markets which already benefit from FIX, including over $150 trillion in annual turnover for global equity markets.bitcoin kurs 2009Proponents will argue that bitcoin is now just “another” asset class that uses FIX, just like the debt and derivate markets or the $5 trillion in foreign exchange transactions that happen around the globe per day.list of litecoin mining software

The tech behind the FIX protocol is well understood and we now have a large and active global developer community who are able to integrate bitcoin into the world of finance.This makes bitcoin that much easier for exchanges, institutions, regulators and analysts to understand and operate.The FIX protocol is the blood of the financial industry, it is the open source agreed upon standard that companies use to communicate trading information among themselves.bitcoin split private keyIt has become the way the world trades, virtually every major stock exchange and investment bank uses FIX for electronic trading.ethereum hash speedThe FIX protocol and bitcoin are similar in the way that actual money is exchanging hands and assets are being moved.ethereum miner program

Messages can not be intercepted and tampered with and each transaction must be recorded and made available upon request.Exact time of each transaction must be recorded and the client and server must be able to keep records in sync even after a service interruption.Being able to integrate with the FIX protocol will enable bitcoin’s continued adoption and could even be a catalyst for accelerated growth.Leading bitcoin prices plummeted in China on Wednesday evening, after The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) revealed it was placing the country’s major bitcoin trading platforms under close scrutiny.litecoin gpu mining 2017It is the first regulatory move China’s central bank has taken over the virtual currency, since it defined bitcoin as a “commodity” rather than a “currency” in 2013, when it ruled it out of its financial regulatory coverage.The bitcoin price plunged to 5,800 yuan in China, just minutes after the announcement made on the PBOC’s official website, from an intra-day high at 6,450 yuan.

Bitcoin surged to a record high of 8,995 yuan in China on January 5, before plunging to 6,000 yuan later that day after many investors complained they could not log on to Huobi or OKCoin, two of the largest mainland exchanges.The two platforms later said their trading systems had been temporarily brought down by what they called explosive trading offers, which meant too many people were trying to log on at the same time and place selling orders, causing the trading system to seize.The PBOC and its Shanghai branch issued two notices the following day: one announcing they had held high-level meetings with the major bitcoin platform managers in which they urged them to reinforce risk controls, and another reminding investors that bitcoin is “a virtual commodity, not a currency”.“The PBOC is joining hands with Beijing Financial Bureau and other related departments, and have sent inspection teams to bitcoin trading platforms including Huobi and OKcoin, to check if they are running in accordance with foreign exchange management, anti-money laundering , and trading exchange rules,” Wednesday’s statement said.

On Tuesday, the official China Securities Journal reported China is considering introducing third-party custodian service to the bitcoin market.“Regulators have noticed that some bitcoin platforms crashed during the recent market volatilities, causing some investors, particularly those trading with leverage tools, to bear huge losses because they were unable to log on to the website during the sell-off,” CSJ reported.The newspaper said that the regulators are discussing with industry insiders the possibility of improving trading security by setting up third-party custodian platforms for the bitcoin market.Turnover of bitcoin in China now accounts for 80 per cent of the global total.The price surged to around 8,000 yuan per bitcoin by the end of 2016 from 2,500 yuan at the beginning of the year, CSJ said.In early August investor confidence in bitcoin took another big hit after Bitfinex, a prominent Hong Kong-based digital currency exchange, reported the theft of about US$65.8 million worth of bitcoins.