The price of bitcoin continued its impressive rally in the past seven days shooting up from $5,600 on the morning of October 16 to peak at $6,187 on October 21. The ascent marks an intra-week price jump of more than 10 percent, which may not seem much when looking at the altcoin market but as bitcoin’s volatility is decreasing price jumps like these are no longer that common.
Equally as impressive as bitcoin’s new all-time high is its surge in value as a currency. With a market capitalization of over $100 billion, the value of bitcoin is currently almost equivalent to the M1 money supply of the country Turkey.
Bitcoin holders and community members are celebrating the new high, which is a testament to the resilience of bitcoin in the face of seemingly increasing regulatory opposition to decentralized alternative currencies in different parts of the world and community infighting which has led and will lead to further forks of the bitcoin blockchain.
Also, the controversial and much-debated Bitcoin Gold fork, which is supposed to occur around October 24, is having no negative effect on the price of bitcoin whatsoever. Interestingly, Coinbase claims that this fork has already occurred and many community members call the professionality of the Bitcoin Gold project into question. The Bitcoin Gold cryptocurrency is distributed around a week after the new blockchain diverges, around November 1.
The altcoin market did not benefit from bitcoin’s two-week bull market run. In the past seven days, alts have either moved sideways or lost value as traders are moving their money back into bitcoin to profit from its current run.
This week’s review is compiled from contributions by Liam Kelly, Jamie Holmes, Joseph Young, Michael Scott, Tabassum Naiz.
Emerging Dispute within Tezos puts Investors at Risk
Tezos is facing issues of “mo money, mo problems” because of a dispute amongst Arthur and Kathleen Breitman (the founders of Tezos and owners of the code) against Johann Gevers, president of the Swiss Tezos Foundation which was formed to manage the money raised. This schism is yet to resolve and could cause a delay in the future product launch.
The dispute occurs against the Swiss foundation when $232 million funds raised through ICO is urged to handle by Johann Gevers. Providentially, the phenomenal growth in the value of bitcoin has certainly boosted Tezos takings. Since the ICO contribution was created from two parts, i.e., ether and bitcoin, it has grown to more than $400 million presently.
According to a recent report by Reuters “the Breitmans demanded Gevers to be removed from the foundation.” They also accused him of “self-dealing’” and misrepresenting a major bonus of $1.5 million that he tried claiming for himself. In contrast, Gevers claimed it was a “character assassination” by the Breitmans and by controlling the foundation as if it is their private entity, they are trying to overstep their legal bounds.
WikiLeaks Bitcoin Donations Skyrocket: Assange Thanks U.S. Government
Following WikiLeak’s massive release of secret U.S. diplomatic information in November 2010, the US government forced third-party payment processors like Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and the Western Union to stop supporting donations to WikiLeaks in December of that year.
As a result, WikiLeaks decided to circumvent this blockade by accepting bitcoin as its primary form of payment.
In an October 14 tweet on the social messaging site Twitter, Assange commented: “My deepest thanks to the US government, Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman for pushing Visa, MasterCard, Paypal, AmEx, Moneybookers, et al., into erecting an illegal banking blockade against @WikiLeaks starting in 2010. It caused us to invest in Bitcoin — with 50000% return.”
Bitcoin Soars Above $6000, Resistance Expected Near $7000
Bitcoin has broken to yet another all-time high on October 20, breaching above the $6000 handle. We have obtained the bullish saucer signal on the weekly timeframe that we anticipated on October 13, triggering bullish momentum which is likely to take the market to a new ceiling near $7000. The market capitalization has also reached a significant milestone, with Bitcoin’s network value exceeding $100 billion for the first time.
IBM, KlickEx, and Stellar Set Out to Speed up International Finance
On October 16, IBM announced that it would be collaborating with KlickEx and Stellar in order to accelerate the speed of banking transactions. The platform will be built on IBM’s Blockchain and seeks to help consumers achieve faster settlement times as well as reduce the cost of global payments.
The goal of IBM’s platform is to ultimately give equal access to banking institutions, even to those living in the remotest portions of the world. Senior Vice President of IBM Industry Platforms, Bridget van Kralingen added that,“With the guidance of some of the world’s leading financial institutions, IBM is working to explore new ways to make payment networks more efficient and transparent so that banking can happen in real-time, even in the most remote parts of the world.”
As KlickEx has been responsible for working with underdeveloped payment corridors, most notably those in Oceania, they will bring a wealth of experience to this growing market. Robert Bell, the founder of KlickEx Group, created his company for this exact purpose and only sees the integration of Stellar’s blockchain technology as a revolutionary development in the remittance business. Bell confirmed that “Through KlickEx, the Pacific has had relatively low-cost, real-time, multi-currency payments for most of the past decade, and this project was a natural next step following our work to create seamless and borderless payments across the Pacific. We look forward to the results with using IBM Blockchain as we continue to push forward with our mission to remove payment friction across borders.”
Highly-respected and Vocal BitGo Engineer Targeted with SWAT Prank
On October 16, Jameson Lopp, the lead engineer for BitGo and a highly respected figure within the cryptocurrency sector, fell victim to a cowardly attack which involved him looking down the barrel of a rifle and a false hostage situation report.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Lopp revealed that the attack led the local police department to shut down most of his neighborhood to investigate the incident with “dozens of patrol units, a SWAT team, mobile command post, a fire truck, and paramedics.” While Lopp gave reassurances that the police were able to deal with the incident, he noted that it was “a huge waste of public resources.”
Although Lopp told TechCrunch that he cannot conclude with absolute certainty that the attack was carried out due to his philosophy on Bitcoin and scaling debates, he explained that similar attacks had been carried out against prominent Bitcoin experts, investors, and public figures.
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