Showing posts with label Bitcoin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bitcoin. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Almost Half a Billion Worth of Bitcoins Vanish

The Wall Street Journal


Mt. Gox Says It Lost 750,000 of Customers' Bitcoin to Fraud

Mt. Gox, once the dominant exchange for bitcoin trading, on Friday said more than $470 million of the virtual currency vanished from its digital coffers, kicking into high gear a search for the missing money by victims and cybersleuths.
Acting alone and in groups, the people stepped up their efforts after Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan and confirmed rumors it had lost almost 750,000 of its customers' bitcoins, as well as roughly 100,000 of its own.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

China bitcoin arbitrage ends as traders work around capital controls

BY GABRIEL WILDAU
SHANGHAI Wed Dec 11, 2013 7:17am EST
(Reuters) - The price gap between bitcoins trading in Chinese yuan and those sold for other currencies has evaporated in recent days, highlighting the porous nature of China's capital controls.

Chinese bitcoin chat rooms buzzed last month as investors noticed that the digital currency as sold on China's biggest exchange was more expensive, in dollar terms, than bitcoins traded abroad using dollars, creating a tempting arbitrage play.

Traders could earn profits by buying bitcoins using dollars on a foreign exchange such as Mt. Gox, reselling them for yuan at the higher price on BTC China, the main local exchange, and finally converting the yuan back to dollars.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions

By Bloomberg News - Dec 5, 2013 12:25 PM GMT+0200
China’s central bank barred financial institutions from handling Bitcoin transactions, moving to regulate the virtual currency after an 89-fold jump in its value sparked a surge of investor interest in the country.
Bitcoin plunged more than 20 percent to below $1,000 on the BitStamp Internet exchange after the People’s Bank of China said it isn’t a currency with “real meaning” and doesn’t have the same legal status. The public is free to participate in Internet transactions provided they take on the risk themselves, it said.
The ban reflects concern about the risk the digital currency may pose to China’s capital controls and financial stability after a surge in trading this year made the country the world’s biggest trader of Bitcoin, according to exchange operator BTC China. Bitcoin’s price jumped more than ninefold in the past two months alone, prompting former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to call it a “bubble.”

Friday, November 29, 2013

The Bitcoin bubble

The Economist
Nov 30th 2013
It looks overvalued. But even if this digital currency crashes, others will follow
BITCOIN is booming. Investors are piling into the digital currency, which is not issued by a central bank but is conjured into being by cryptographic software running on a network of volunteers’ computers. This week the price of a Bitcoin soared to above $1,000, from less than $15 in January.