by Tyler Durden In recent weeks it has been Japanese demand (and notable premia) that has driven the exponential rise in Bitcoin, but recently, as CoinTelegraph reports, it has been South Korea.Overenight saw Bitcoin prices explode once again, smashing through $2500, $2600, and $2700 for the first time... reports, South Korean Bitcoin traders are facing asking prices of $4,500 as the virtual currency’s price continues to surge.Order books from domestic exchange Coinone list a current price of 4,254,000 won ($3805), with a 24-hour high of 5,025,000 ($4494). reports, the region has also been blossoming with startups dedicated to bitcoin remittance and financial tech advancement.The South Korean government has been very friendly towards digital currencies, and the country is steadily becoming a technology hub.Just recently the government lowered the equity capital requirement for bitcoin companies working with remittances.The new statutes will begin on June 18 with a reduction of required capital to 1 billion KRW in contrast to the prior requirement of 2 billion KRW.

Additionally, researchers from the South Korean central bank recently released a report that detailed that virtual currencies like bitcoin can “coexist with fiat.” "The recent emergence of digital currency opens up a new type of dual currency regime in which digital currency, which has no intrinsic value and a government-issued fiat currency coexist,” explained the researchers from Seoul’s Hongik University and members of the Bank of Korea’s (BOK) report.The wide spreads are unprecedented even compared to other recently inflated markets such as Japan, local exchange bitFlyer listing a price of 333,200 yen ($2980).On Coinbase, one Bitcoin is currently selling for $2667.53 as of press time on Thursday.Users have presented various theories as to why South Korea’s exchange market is so varied, these ranging from capital controls to en masse arbitrage and even a “debt-fuelled bubble” economy.Bitcoin itself, meanwhile, is continuing to produce new price highs, flying in the face of those concerned that a new bubble has formed.

by Tyler Durden Following comments from DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach tieing the surge in virtual currencies to the demise of China (right before that nation is downgraded), Bitcoin surged overnight, breaking above $2400 for the first time.It is now up over 150% year-to-date.Bitcoin is up fopr the 26th day in the last 29 sessions, doubling in price in that period... Wednesday's gain comes after a bitcoin scaling agreement was reached by the Digital Currency Group, representing 56 companies in 21 countries, at the Consensus 2017 conference in New York, which reduced some of the fears surrounding the so-called 'hard fork' in Bitcoin's code.bitcoin wallet location mac os xThe agreement states: "We agree to immediately support the following parallel upgrades to the bitcoin protocol, which will be deployed simultaneously and based on the original Segwit2Mb proposal: "Activate Segregated Witness at an 80% threshold, signaling at bit 4 "Activate a 2 MB hard fork within six months" The announcement is the latest bit of good news for the cryptocurrency.ethereum faster than bitcoin

At the beginning of April, Japan announced bitcoin had become a legal payment method in the country.Additionally, Ulmart, Russia's largest online retailer, said it would begin accepting bitcoin even though Russia had said it wouldn't explore the cryptocurrency until 2018.The gains also seem to be boosted by speculation the US Securities and Exchange Commission could overturn its ruling on the Winklevoss twins' bitcoin exchange-traded fund.bitcoin will reach 100 000Thousands of people have pumped $150 million into what might be the biggest crowdfunded project in history, something called the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).bitcoin faucet for iphoneCompare this to the $20 million raised by the project with the most funds on Kickstarter, the Pebble Time smartwatch.achat bitcoin par paypal

The strange thing about this crowdfunding is that the DAO doesn’t produce any concrete products or services–not yet, anyway.The DAO’s big promise is that it’s an entirely new way to manage and allocate capital.More specifically, it’s capital allocation without a fund manager.Think of it as venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, but with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz replaced by the wisdom of the crowd.litecoin open source codeThat crowd consists of about 11,000 anonymous stakeholders who can vote directly on any major decision to spend the organization’s funds.aplikasi bitcoinCompanies or individuals who want to tap the funds must submit a proposal.bitcoin gstThese proposals are published online, and stakeholders ultimately vote on whether to adopt them, allocating a slice of the $150 million, or not.bitcoin ticker html

Stakeholders then stand to gain from the profits generated by these proposals, whether in the form of dividends or an increase in value of their tokens.“This is an incredible evolution over the Kickstarter model,” says Stephan Tual, the chief executive of Slockit, a company with a proposal on the table for funding from the DAO.Tual’s company has played a pivotal role in getting the DAO going.Its chief technology officer wrote the code that animates the DAO, and the Slockit proposal is just one of two currently published on the site.Tual says there are at least a dozen more proposals in the works, bandied about on the DAO website’s forums, but it’s taking time to get them published (“it’s like herding cats,” he says).Slockit itself has no power over the funds collected so far—no one individual or entity controls the DAO or profits more from it than other stakeholders.This radical experiment in disintermediation has won favor among Silicon Valley’s technorati.Here’s an Andreessen Horowitz partner’s take on it: Think of each cryptocurrency as a startup.

The DAO is Ethereum's way of making sure a sizable chunk of the cap table is devoted to R&D.— Chris Dixon (@cdixon) May 20, 2016 There’s another major factor at work here.The DAO is funded entirely with Ether, the cryptocurrency that’s rivalling bitcoin and exploding in value.That is to say, users need to convert dollars or bitcoins or other currencies to Ether, which they then use to invest in the DAO.Ether was trading at about $0.90 in December, but is now changing hands at nearly $15, or a 15-fold increase in six months.In fact, the DAO has proved so popular among holders of Ether, that the DAO now accounts for almost 14% of the value of all Ether in circulation.Ether, and the protocol it’s built on, called Ethereum, is an essential part of the DAO project.It allows developers to write smart contracts, self-executing agreements that don’t require human intervention, thus enabling ideas like an organization that manages itself.The DAO is essentially a complicated smart contract, with hard-coded rules on voting and governance.

But the same free-market beliefs that birthed the DAO could also stifle it.That’s because DAO stakeholders received tokens in exchange for their Ether at a fixed rate when they bought in.The price of Ether has nearly doubled since DAO tokens first became available on Apr.30, in large part because of the hype generated by the DAO itself.Token holders now have a large incentive to swap their tokens out and get Ether back, which can then be sold for US dollars or bitcoins.Token-holders can’t sell out now, because the DAO smart contract says tokens are locked up during this subscription period.But the lock-up period ends in seven days.That’s when we’ll see a drop in Ether’s stratospheric price rise.“As soon as people are able to transfer out of DAO tokens, the Ether price will drop temporarily,” says Joseph Lee, who runs London-based bitcoin trading platform Magnr.“People would want to cash out.The price has been rising rapidly.” A drop in the Ether price would leave a dent in the value of the DAO’s funds.