Bitcoin has had an exciting year. It has split in two, become more accepted as a form of payment, and soared in value, now resting above $8,000. There’s also that small matter of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, announcing plans to introduce bitcoin futures in 2017 – an announcement that some credit with pushing the cryptocurrency above the $8,000 threshold.
Billionaire trader and legendary hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz says that the bitcoin price will reach $10,000 before the end of the year.
Speaking on Bloomberg TV, Novogratz, who has been bullish on Bitcoin throughout the year, said Bitcoin would yet hit the magic number before the new year, and also predicted $500 per coin for Ether (ETH) within the same period.
A London-startup headed by a Credit Suisse veteran is launching a new debit card that it claims will allow people to spend cryptocurrencies across the UK. The London Block Exchange (LBX) launched on Tuesday. It plans to launch a sterling-to-cryptocurrency exchange and a prepaid Visa debit card, dubbed "Dragoncard," that will allow people to convert bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, litecoin and monero to sterling and spend it across the UK. The startup plans to add more cryptocurrencies in future.
New survey data highlights the ideological and economic factors driving some investors to purchase bitcoin. Financial resources provider LendEDU has just published the results of a new investor survey targeting Bitcoin users, and the respondents feel bullish on the current number #1 cryptocurrency, to say the least.
Square is testing cryptocurrency support in their Cash app, according to TechCrunch reader Zach Miles on Twitter and confirmed by the company. The trial, which seems to only be available right now to a small number of users, lets you buy and sell bitcoin directly in the app.
The interface is very basic. Users who have access to the beta can swipe right from the Cash Card page to access bitcoin functionality. Once there users will see a balance in USD and BTC, a graph showing performance over the last day, month or year and buy / sell buttons.
However, it seems that the party is yet not over and analysts are still bullish on the uptrend of Bitcoin. Many believe that the prices of Bitcoin could jump by nearly 70% from here and could possibly touch $10000 by this Christmas.
Technical analysts and investors have predicted based on the charts, Bitcoin prices have convincingly crossed the price benchmarks of 5k, 6k and 7k dollars. The price-volume charts suggest that there is a bullish sign for the investors which can determine the further direction of momentum and analysts say that there is every possibility it could touch $10000 by the year-end.
The newest fork of the bitcoin blockchain is officially live after a rocky start. Bitcoin Gold, or Bgold, officially went live on November 12 2017. It was created as a way to counter Bitcoin’s mining centralisation. Public mining has begun, and the media are reporting that already multiple mining pools have been opened. Aside from the pools, the code has also been released on GitHub.
Speaking to technology industry magazine TechCrunch, Bram Cohen said the Chia Network, his long-hinted Bitcoin alternative, could launch by late 2018.
A “very hot” seed investment round has enabled the project to get off the ground and hire that kind of developer skill required to see Cohen’s Chia cryptocurrency sell to investors.
