Bitcoin falls as S. Korea says exchange closures possible

Downtrend: A small toy figure is seen on representations of the bitcoin virtual currency in this illustration. The cryptocurrency is down about 28 from its record high reached last week. — Reuters

SEOUL: Bitcoin resumed its tumble after South Korea said it was eyeing options including a potential shutdown of at least some cryptocurrency exchanges to stamp out a frenzy of speculation.

South Korea has been ground zero for a global surge in interest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as prices surged this year, prompting the nation’s prime minister to worry over the impact on Korean youth.

While there’s no immediate indication Asia’s No. 4 economy will shutter exchanges that have accounted by some measures for more than fifth of global trading, the news poses a warning as regulators the world over express concerns about private digital currencies.

Bitcoin fell as much as 9% to as low as US$13,828 in Asia trading, erasing modest gains after the South Korean release, composite Bloomberg pricing shows. It’s now down about 28% from its record high reached last week.

South Korea will require real-name cryptocurrency transactions and impose a ban on the offering of virtual accounts by banks to crypto-exchanges, according to a statement from the Office for Government Policy Coordination.

Policy makers will review measures including the closure of crypto-exchanges suggested by the Ministry of Justice and take proper measures swiftly and firmly while monitoring the trend of the speculation. Bitcoin was trading at about a 30% premium over prevailing international rates yesterday in Seoul – a continuing sign of the country’s obsession, and the difficulty in arbitraging between markets.

“Cryptocurrency speculation has been irrationally overheated in South Korea,” the government said in the statement, which comes little more than a week after the bankruptcy filing of one South Korean exchange. “The government can’t leave the abnormal situation of speculation any longer.”

Singapore’s monetary authority warned last week that cryptocurrency buyers should be aware they could lose all their money, joining counterparts who’ve warned about speculative mania surrounding bitcoin, which has surged more than 1,300% this year.

“Regulators are getting so concerned that this is primarily and predominantly a retail phenomenon,” said Stephen Innes, head of trading for Asia-Pacific at Oanda. “Regulators not only in Asia but globally are going to start addressing this fact because I don’t think they’ve actually come to terms with what the absolute downside of a complete drop in crypto means for the economy.”

Source: Bloomberg

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JPMorgan CEO warns he will fire any employee trading Bitcoin for being “stupid.”

 

JPMorgan CEO Predicts the Future of Bitcoin

 

Tough stand: Dimon has warned that he will fire JPMorgan traders who traded in bitcoin ‘in a second. For two reasons: It’s against our rules, and they’re stupid. And both are dangerous.’ — AFP

NEW YORK: JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive officer Jamie Dimon said he will fire any employee trading bitcoin for being “stupid.”

The cryptocurrency “won’t end well,” he told an investor conference in New York on Tuesday, predicting it will eventually blow up. “It’s a fraud” and “worse than tulip bulbs.”

If a JPMorgan trader began trading in bitcoin, he said: “I’d fire them in a second. For two reasons: It’s against our rules, and they’re stupid. And both are dangerous.”

Bitcoin has soared in recent months, spurred by greater acceptance of the blockchain technology that underpins the exchange method and optimism that faster transaction times will encourage broader use of the cryptocurrency.

Prices have climbed more than four-fold this year – a run that has drawn debate over whether that’s a bubble.

Bitcoin initially slipped after Dimon’s remarks. It was down as much as 2.7% before recovering.

Last week, it slumped after reports that China plans to ban trading of virtual currencies on domestic exchanges, dealing another blow to the US$150bil cryptocurrency market.

Tulips are a reference to the mania that swept Holland in the 17th century, with speculators driving up prices of virtually worthless tulip bulbs to exorbitant levels.

That didn’t end well.

In bitcoin’s case, Dimon said he’s sceptical authorities will allow a currency to exist without state oversight, especially if something goes wrong.

“Someone’s going to get killed and then the government’s going to come down,” he said.

“You just saw in China, governments like to control their money supply.”

Dimon differentiated between the bitcoin currency and the underlying blockchain technology, which he said can be useful.

Still, he said banks’ application of blockchain “won’t be overnight.”

The bank chief said he wouldn’t short bitcoin because there’s no telling how high it will go before it collapses.

The best argument he’s heard, he said, is that it can be useful to people in places with no other options – so long as the supply of coins doesn’t surge.

“If you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea or a bunch of parts like that, or if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that, you are better off doing it in bitcoin than US dollars,” he said.

“So there may be a market for that, but it’d be a limited market.”— Bloomberg


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Bitcoin must not in your retirement financial planning portfolio

Bitcoin investments have undeniably become a trend among savvy investors in search of the golden goose, but one financial planner is against the use of it as part of the financial planning portfolio for retirement.

Max Growth Wealth Education Sdn Bhd managing director Nicholas Chu said one should not use bitcoin as part of the retirement portfolio and the public must be well aware of the risk in bitcoin trading before getting in.

“It is not asset-backed, it is very unsecure. It is, basically, you want to participate in the future changes. It’s not a proper financial planning way. It is just an experimental thing that you want to go through in this era, but it is not a proper investment product,” he told SunBiz.

“I definitely don’t agree if they use this for their financial planning. But for those who are able to try new ventures, they can go ahead provided they have extra money. If this doesn’t affect their existing financial planning, then I’ll leave it to them. We need to tell them the pros and cons of this investment. It’s up to the clients to do the final decision,” he said.

Chu cautioned on the uncertainties of bitcoin trading, which is driven by market forces. “It is beyond anybody’s control, all the participants contribute to the bitcoin value. From that, I can say that there are a lot of uncertainties in the future,” he said.

Nonetheless, with the setting up of a few bitcoin exchanges, Chu noted that there will be demand and supply with tradeable markets available.

Bitcoin was the best-performing currency in 2015 and 2016, with a rise of 35.8% and 126.2% respectively.

Year to date, bitcoin prices have leaped more than three times. It stood at US$2,840 (RM12,140) as at 5pm last Friday.

Bitcoins are by the far the most popular cryptocurrency, which exists almost wholly in the digital realm and has no asset backing it. Bitcoin generation, known as mining, while open to anyone with a “mining application” on their computer, needs a great deal of computing power to solve complex algorithms which are later verified with the entire bitcoin network.

Colbert Low, founder of bitcoinmalaysia.com, said the recent spike in bitcoin prices could be partly due to the legalisation of bitcoin by the Japanese government.

He is unsure if the sharp rise in bitcoin prices will create a price bubble, but stressed that one cannot judge its price movement based on the “old economic theory”.

“This is a new economy based on a different model. It’s very hard to say,” Low opined, noting that there has been a growing number of retail outlets that accept bitcoin.

He foresees the usage of bitcoin propagating, especially in different types of payment methods.

However, Low opined that there will not be any “big movement” in the local market if the regulators do not regulate bitcoin.

“Our new Bank Negara governor is forward thinking and he is very much into fintech, technology and innovation. So there would definitely be improvement,” Low said.

The positive development of blockchain will be a catalyst for the growth of bitcoin, he added.

“Blockchain is a real thing that will change the way the IP system is architectured. We need to go down to a deeper level to see how blockchain can change the current problem and solve it.

“There are a lot of projects right now, over 500 companies are looking at this (blockchain) right now. Even IBM, HP and Microsoft are looking at it.”

Blockchain refers to distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, secure from tampering and revision. Bitcoin is just an application or software that runs on blockchain technology.

“If you look at blockchain technology, government agencies like the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are looking at it. This is the best way to secure your data,” Low said, noting that the usage of bitcoin will help reduce operating cost.

Currently, there are about 16 million bitcoins in the market and the number is capped at 21 million.

Bank Negara has said that it does not regulate the cryptocurrency and advised the public to be cautious of the risks associated with the usage of such digital currency.

Source: By Lee Weng Khuen sunbiz@thesundaily.com

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Never-ending money games - from fixed return to split schemes

The Cryptocurrencies—Regulation, Taxation, and Consumer Protection

The allure of money game schemes (or money games) seems not to have diminished despite the collapse of many recently.

Instead, there has been a switch in investors’ focus from fixed-return games to split games, which are deemed “more sustainable”.

Fixed-return schemes generally refer to those that give a consistent percentage of return every month or week. However, most of them have collapsed lately.

Investors’ attention is now centred on split games, even though this means they have to wait for a longer period in order to get back their capital.

Mcoin, which is undertaken through MBI International Sdn Bhd and MFace International Sdn Bhd, is an example of a split game based on units of which the value keeps increasing and then split after a certain time.

However, with the raid of MBI’s flagship mall – M Mall in Penang – by the regulators recently, its days look to be numbered, and the sustainability of such schemes is now a big question.

Another prominent split game – Mama Captain, which has a similar business model to that of Mcoin – has also been red-flagged by Bank Negara last Thursday under the Financial Consumer Alert List. An additional 14 companies have been added to the list, bringing the total number of unapproved and unlicensed companies/schemes to 334 as at June 29.

Besides the local ones, there are several foreign schemes in the market, which investors expect to have more staying power than the fixed-return schemes. Two such schemes from China – Smart Traders Ltd and Centennial Coin of Prosperity – have been in operation in Malaysia since last year. However, it is understood that they have stopped distributing returns to their investors.

This, however, appears not to have deterred those who are lured by the promise of fast money. This is evidenced by the huge crowd seen at an event organised by a split game company a few weeks ago in Shah Alam. It was estimated that over 2,000 participants were present and most of them were Chinese investors.

A number of booths were set up at the venue, and investors were able to redeem a variety of stuff, including vouchers, health products, apparels and many more.

An investor whom SunBiz spoke to at the event said he is unfazed by the collapse of money games and is optimistic about the prospects of the split game that he is involved in.

The investor said he has been in the scheme for more than nine months and now it has started to bear fruit.

“Generally, it takes about two months to split once and we can start generating money after it splits for four times. Now I start to get money from the scheme. While you’ve to wait for some time before getting any return, I think it is still worth to join,” he opined. It is understood that the scheme has tied up with a few product operators to increase its attractiveness. Another investor, Alan Mu, said he was amazed by the event. “The gala dinner is so grand and there are so many products that I can redeem by participating in this scheme,” he said.

Another scheme that has caught the market’s attention is SV International (SVI), a company that Yong Tai Bhd has denied having links to. Yong Tai alleged that SVI circulated photos taken during a signing ceremony on SVI’s website as well as the social media, for which there was no official agreement entered into between the two parties thereafter.

Yong Tai also refuted speculation that SVI has a stake in its Impression City and Impression Melaka projects.

By Lee Weng Khuen sunbiz@thesundaily.com

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MCOIN is still very much a talking point, especially in Penang. To the uninitiated, it is the “digital currency” of MBI International, a company involved in a myriad of activities and hogging the limelight for the wrong reasons after being flagged as one of the entities not recognised by Bank Negara.

Since Bank Negara’s warning two weeks ago, the company’s accounts amounting to some RM177mil have been frozen. The cash in question is significantly much more than the previous major scheme that came under probe by Bank Negara and other agencies.

In 2012, the authorities froze RM99.8mil in bank accounts of Genneva Malaysia Sdn Bhd. Also, 126kg of gold were carted away from the office. It has been five years and the investors, most of them ordinary wage earners looking to earn an extra buck from their savings, have yet to receive their money.

One of the reasons is likely that the liabilities of Genneva Malaysia are 10 times more than the assets recovered.

MBI International, which is primarily based in Penang, has a network stretching up to China. According to reports, it has come under pressure from some investors wanting a return of their money.

However, outlets in M Mall in Penang are still accepting Mcoin for the purchase of goods and services. There is no rush to cash out, as one would have expected, considering that the accounts of MBI International have been frozen.

Nonetheless, it is only a matter of time before the value of Mcoin and the ability of MBI International to return money to its investors is put to the test.

Based on previous events that led to companies having their bank accounts seized by the central bank, it would be a long time before the investors are able to retrieve their cash.

There are some who are completely ignorant of the new global order of currencies and money, making comparisons between Mcoin and the rise of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

If anybody is harbouring any hope that the value of Mcoin would rise just like the phenomenal bull run seen in the world of cryptocurrency, they had better stop dreaming.

There are fundamental differences between instruments such as Mcoin, which in essence is a token to redeem goods at a few outlets, compared to cryptocurrency that is fast gaining traction as an alternative currency around the world.

Mcoin has unlimited supply and its value is controlled by one entity. How the value is derived is not clear.

In contrast, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have a limited supply. And the supply is decentralised – meaning no one entity controls the supply. There is a ledger that tracks all transactions and measures the amount of supply and how much more is available.

The objective of the people behind cryptocurrency is to come up with a currency that is not controlled by central banks. New supply can only come about after hours of a process called `mining’.

The mining process is a complicated one. It involves many hours of programming and utilising high computing skills to predict the next chain in the block of coins. The data used is based on historical transactions and it is said that one block is created every 10 minutes.

Only one successful miner is rewarded with a slice of the cryptocurrency at any one time. He or she can then transact it in an exchange.

The first cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, which began operating in January 2009.

Bitcoin is only one of the hundreds of cryptocurrencies in existence. There are many more new coins coming up, improving on the technology pioneered by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Nobody knows who is Satoshi or if he really exists. However, the legend is that he wanted a currency that is not under the control of central banks, hence the birth of Bitcoin, the first decentralised currency.

The market capitalisation of all cryptocurrency was US$27bil as of April this year – four times more than what the value was in January this year.

Much of the rise is attributed to the volatile US dollar. A few years ago, if anybody had said that cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin would be used to hedge against the US dollar, many would have laughed it off.

Today, however, it is the reality.

The cryptocurrency fever has picked up in China, which has the largest number of “miners” in the world. One reason is said to be because some see it as one way to take capital out of the country.

In India, when the government decided to demonetise the popular 1,000 and 500 rupee notes, there was a 50% increase in the trading of Bitcoin, as people saw it as one way to legalise their black money.

Bitcoin soared past the US$2,500 mark last week, which is a four-fold increase since January this year. There are many other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, that are all seeing a bull run.

The world of cryptocurrency has taken a life of its own. Computer geeks with “blockchain” expertise, the technology that drives the decentralisation settlements of cryptocurrency, are commanding more than US$250,000 per annum.

It is said to be more than what a consultant or a software engineer can earn.

Those who have put their money into cryptocurrency would be laughing all the way to the bank now. But dynamics and fundamentals are complicated. The strength of the cryptocurrency is not based on historical numbers. It does not have an asset backing it.

It is based on future expectations of what the designer of the cryptocurrency offers. It is a complicated investment not meant for the unsophisticated investor.

Only fools will go for investment schemes that are unregulated and offer promises of returns that are unsustainable. They will lose all the time.

The smart investor will rely on traditional stocks and shares with earnings that are visible. Those who are not greedy will surely gain.

The super-smart geeks are banking on the world of cryptocurrency that has a volatile history. Their fate is uncertain.

Source: The Star by M. Shanmugam

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Who created Bitcoin? How? Why? The long search may not be over

SAN FRANCISCO  — Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? For many in the tech world, the identity of bitcoin's elusive creator has been a long-running parlor game. And the speculation might not be over.

Australian entrepreneur Craig Steven Wright, who announced Monday that he founded the digital currency , convinced at least one longtime bitcoin contributor that he's the real deal. He managed that feat via a technical demonstration involving Nakamoto's secret bitcoin keys. But Wright's public documentation, which he posted online Monday , underwhelmed others and left the question of Nakamoto's true identity far from settled.

"There's no way you can conclusively prove that you are the creator of bitcoin," said Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center, a Washington, D.C.-based crypto-currency think tank, who is skeptical of Wright's claims.

Tracking a pseudonymous cryptographic genius would be challenging under the best circumstances. And here we're talking someone who invented a way for people to send money around the world anonymously, without banks or national currencies. Someone who apparently disappeared five years ago for unknown reasons.

None of that has stopped people from trying. Journalists, researchers and amateur detectives have scoured Nakamoto's emails and online posts, plus the original bitcoin code, for unusual phrases, cultural references and other potential clues to their author.

One of the most celebrated candidates — to his own dismay — was an unassuming Japanese-American engineer who found himself in the cross-hairs of Newsweek magazine in 2014.

Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto was wrongly identified as the inventor of Bitcoin in 2014

A Newsweek cover story fingered Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, a retired resident of suburban Los Angeles County, after citing circumstantial clues and a vague comment that Nakamoto made when confronted briefly on his front doorstep. The article sparked a media frenzy and a car chase with reporters that ended at the Los Angeles offices of The Associated Press — where Dorian Nakamoto emphatically denied any involvement with bitcoin.

An earlier contender named in a 2011 New Yorker magazine piece was Michael Clear, then a graduate student in cryptography at Trinity College in Dublin. The New Yorker cited some of Nakamoto's writings, which used British slang such as "maths" for mathematics and "flat" for an apartment. It also noted that Clear had worked on currency-trading software for an Irish bank and co-authored a paper on "peer-to-peer" technology similar to that used in bitcoin.

At first, according to the New Yorker, Clear was evasive when asked at a cryptography conference if he had created bitcoin. But he later denied it repeatedly. He also suggested another candidate to the New Yorker reporter, naming Finnish researcher Vili Lehdonvirta, who studied virtual currencies and created video games.

"I would love to say that I'm Satoshi, because bitcoin is very clever," Lehdonvirta told the New Yorker, after laughing for several seconds. "But it's not me."

Speculation has also focused on a Hungarian-American computer scientist named Nick Szabo, who was called a likely candidate by linguistic experts who conducted their own "reverse textual analysis" — essentially, looking for distinctive phrases or word patterns — on an early white paper by the bitcoin creator.

The only problem? Szabo, who has worked on other digital currencies, has repeatedly denied creating bitcoin.

Other scientists' names have surfaced over the years; some theories pose the notion of two or three working together. But denials have usually followed each new mention.

At one point, two Israeli mathematicians floated, and later retracted, the notion that bitcoin was created by the founder of Silk Road, an online bazaar known for trade in various illicit goods.

Conspiracy theorists have even speculated it could have been the work of some shadowy government agency — no one's saying which government — to undermine established currencies or somehow monitor online transactions. (That theory depends on the unproved notion that the creator retained the ability to decode bitcoin's encryption.)

Vice magazine once suggested Nakamoto might be Gavin Andresen, an American software expert and early bitcoin enthusiast who has helped push bitcoin forward in Nakamoto's absence. Andresen has denied it — and on Monday declared that he believes Wright is Nakamoto.

But other cryptocurrency enthusiasts aren't convinced it's Wright. The truth, they say, is still out there. - AP

http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/bitcoin-economy-graphic-day/

AP EXPLAINS: What Is Bitcoin? A Look at the Digital Currency How it work, security, vulnerability and why? 

Comments:

Indeed, the way Wright has stage-managed the latest revelations about himself seem inconsistent with what we know about Nakamoto. Wright chose to give his scoop to the BBC, the Economist, and GQ. These are all excellent publications, but none of them are known for their in-depth coverage of computer security. The real Satoshi Nakamoto should have anticipated that no one would give much weight to a GQ scoop about his identity.

Bitcoin was Nakamoto's attempt to create a financial system that didn't require trusting the fallible human beings that run the banking system. Yet when Wright decided to reveal his identity as Nakamoto, he chose to do it via face-to-face meetings with a handful of journalists and Bitcoin insiders instead of providing mathematically rigorous proof that anyone could verify. It's hard to believe that's what Nakamoto would have done.

Bitcoin, explained

http://www.vox.com/cards/bitcoin

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