QuickTake: Bitcoin and the Blockchain Bitcoin jumped to a new high Friday, a day after soaring past the price of an ounce of gold for the first time.One unit of the virtual currency was trading above $1,292.71 at 7:30 a.m.in New York, compared with $1,226.89 for an ounce of gold.The metal’s had a terrible week, declining for the fourth time in five days.The latest surge in bitcoin’s value has been attributed to tighter currency restrictions in countries such as China, India and Venezuela, as well as speculation about prospects under the Trump administration.Bitcoin still has a lot to prove, John Butler, head of wealth services for GoldMoney, said in an interview.“We’re a long way from bitcoin establishing its properties as anything that could be considered to be a reasonably stable store of value,” Butler said.“The fact that it’s passing through gold is just arbitrary.”China’s three biggest Bitcoin exchanges suspended withdrawals last month after pressure from the People’s Bank of China, which was concerned people were using bitcoin to move money out of the country, sidestepping official efforts to shore up the yuan.Investors may also be betting on a more relaxed regulatory environment under U.S.

Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to rule on a proposal for an exchange-traded fund based on the digital currency by March 11.“Some people may be frontrunning what they see as the ETF demand down the road,” Butler said.In January, the volatile cryptocurrency passed its 2013 peak of $1,137.kickstarter bitcoin minermerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch noted “the small size of the [bitcoin] market” and “low level of distribution, the lack of general understanding of the concept, the short history of bitcoins, their extreme price volatility and the high proportion of speculators.”—With assistance from Eddie Van Der Walt.bitcoin core paper walletThe requested page cannot be found.dogecoin to php

The bitcoin frenzy just got crazier.The cryptocurrency is now worth almost double an ounce of gold, with a single coin priced at about $2,450.While both are sought as a financial haven in times of political and economic uncertainty, industry executives say the surge in bitcoin is also driven by investors moving to a more established digital asset from riskier versions as more companies embrace the underlying technology.why bitcoin is a ponzi schemeSome are concerned there’s a bitcoin bubble in the making.bitcoin transaction flooding(Bloomberg) -- Bitcoin surpassed gold on Thursday amid a record rally that’s seen the cryptocurrency surge 32 percent this year as investors speculated on a more relaxed regulatory environment under President Donald Trump.maria jones bitcoin

Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to rule on a proposal for an exchange-traded fund based on the digital currency by March 11.Why Ethereum and Bitcoin Are So Popular Lately , taking bitcoin for payment was easy enough, all co-founder Roger Wu had to do was obtain a digital wallet.bitcoin to inr price chartTo promote the move in 2014, he even penned a blog post for Forbes explaining the decision.The number of transactions the New York-based firm has made since?ethereum future trendZero.“The biggest thing is are people willing to pay in bitcoin?” Wu said.bitcoin ngo“The reality is that most of our customers are other businesses and other businesses don’t use bitcoin."Even as the euphoria over bitcoin reached a fever pitch last week as the price surged to almost $3,000, slow transaction times and inertia are helping to prevent it from achieving widespread usage.

Adoption has slowed, according to Morgan Stanley, after a slew of companies from Microsoft Corp.initially trumpeted its use, and hurdles remain when it comes to longer-term viability.“We see few reasons for consumers to use bitcoin over a credit/debit card given that paying online with bitcoin represents a marginally more inconvenient way to pay,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a 33-page report released June 13.Processing costs for bitcoin and other digital currencies are likely to grow, they said.Read more on the companies benefiting from the demand for cryptocurrenciesTime Inc.said they’ve stopped accepting the cryptocurrency, with the computer maker citing low usage.When website content management system Wordpress stopped taking bitcoin in 2015, founder Matt Mullenweg said usage was “vanishingly small,” adding that it was initially incorporated for philosophical reasons, not commercial ones.“It’s quite possible that after a while you just realize it’s not worth the cost of tooling up to take it and you decide to drop it if the publicity has run its course,” said David Yermack, a professor at New York University Stern School of Business who studies bitcoin.

Still, there’s plenty of evidence the price surge has helped boost bitcoin’s use -- albeit from a low base.Payment processor BitPay said its now handling about $2 million in transactions a day, up almost threefold from April 2016.Coinbase’s volume has doubled since the start of the year. Inc., an online discounter, said it’s been handling around 100,000 bitcoin transactions per week, up from about 30,000 when it first added the payment method in 2014.“There is what might be called a wealth effect that occurs, so as price increases people actually counter-intuitively are more likely to spend bitcoin,” said Justin O’Brien, product manager at Coinbase in San Francisco, which has partnered with more than 46,000 businesses for bitcoin payment.Yet somewhat paradoxically, there’s the question of whether its status as a red-hot asset is compatible with being a stable method of payment.There’s the issue of volatility.This year has seen bitcoin surge and plunge by as much as 19 percent over the course of a day.

As transactions rise, processing them is also becoming slower and more expensive because of a cap on the data the bitcoin blockchain can process -- an issue whose resolution has spurred bitter infighting within the development community.“The blockchain underpinnings of most cryptocurrencies scale too poorly for most currency-like uses,” the Morgan Stanley analysts wrote.“Time to clear single transactions can often be from 10 minutes to more than an hour.”And probably most importantly, bitcoin isn’t recognized as legal tender.Internal Revenue Service has ruled that bitcoins are property, while regulators treat it as a commodity.Most big businesses take bitcoin through payment processors such as BitPay and Coinbase.When a consumer makes a purchase via those platforms, he or she will pay at a conversion rate based on the latest bitcoin price.The processors then convert the bitcoin immediately and pass the fiat currency to the seller, essentially removing all exposure to bitcoin’s volatility.Read more on how bitcoin is perplexing analystsFor merchants, Coinbase charges nothing for the first $1 million and 1 percent of transaction values afterward.

That compares with Visa Inc.’s roughly 2 percent interchange rate and almost 3 percent charged by PayPal Holdings Inc.The process is more complicated for shoppers.Unless your digital wallet is already on the platform that’s processing the payment, transferring bitcoins incurs a transaction fee, which can vary depending on its size, how quickly you want it processed and network conditions.The median transaction fee was $2.10 on June 15, compared with an all-time high of nearly $3 reached earlier this month, according to BitInfoCharts.Sonny Singh, BitPay’s chief commercial officer, said bitcoin is more useful in emerging economies where trust in local currencies is weaker and credit cards are less common.The cryptocurrency is making more headway in markets like Japan, which started recognizing digital currencies as a form of payment this year, and in Venezuela, where the bolivar is almost worthless.It’s also useful for businesses that can’t rely on traditional banking, such as cannabis sellers.While greater usage remains in question, there are often some unexpected benefits for merchants who’ve embraced bitcoin.Since the Roast of Sherwood added a Coinbase wallet six weeks ago, it has averaged five bitcoin or ether transactions each week, according to Lee Galloway, who runs the sandwich stall with his father in a bustling street market along London’s Whitecross Street.“For a few small payments we’ve taken, it’s a large amount of publicity,” the 32-year-old said.