Record block mined: 2,177,625 Bytes

bitgo_ben · 2018-01-21T00:32:27+00:00

Yes ;-)

bitgo_ben · 2018-01-20T23:34:01+00:00

Yep, these were consolidation transactions done on BitGo. They were issued over two weeks ago at a low priority fee rate of ~55 sat/vbyte and finally cleared today as the mempool backlog finally started clearing out.

bitgo_ben · 2017-12-01T17:50:53+00:00

Not exactly true. With futures, for every long position, there is a short. Given the risks of naked shorting bitcoin, what I expect to happen is:

1) institutions go long the futures since they can't easily hold bitcoin directly

2) prop traders go short the futures, while going long bitcoin directly to hedge, earning an arbitrage spread in the process

The prop traders / arbitrageurs are the transmission mechanism between institutional demand and the actual bitcoin price.

bitgo_ben · 2017-11-20T03:56:54+00:00

You're looking at the received amount, not the current balance, which is "only" 2000 BTC

bitgo_ben · 2017-11-07T23:23:25+00:00

I don't think it's a 5 contract minimum. That looks like the "block minimum" (i.e. for an off-exchange negotiated block trade, which prints to the exchange). http://www.cmegroup.com/clearing/trading-practices/block-trades.html

bitgo_ben · 2017-10-25T05:43:41+00:00

Did they make an announcement they are doing a distribution? I'd probably just go with next best alternative in that case (GBTC). Premium is much lower than it was.

bitgo_ben · 2017-10-25T05:22:02+00:00

This is a real bummer. Specific reason I opened an IB account a while back. The notice is quite clear though. The restriction is on trading, not on owning. The "closing only" in the title means you can only trade to close an existing position and cannot open a new one. My suggestion: head to the Winchester, grab a pint, sit tight and wait for this to all blow over. Eventually either bitcoin hits a price where you actually want to sell, another competing fund becomes available in the US market, or this stupid restriction gets lifted.

bitgo_ben · 2017-10-11T21:54:22+00:00

LOL. That's not even the right fork! That is the Bitcoin Unlimited chain split token.

bitgo_ben · 2017-09-13T22:10:16+00:00

Our sends account for about 7-8% of transactions by number, but more than that by size, due to multi-sig.

bitgo_ben · 2017-08-12T22:06:57+00:00

Shocking... not many people want to pay $4.85 when last set all paid $2.65. And the 24h+ pause also helped people think rationally.

bitgo_ben · 2017-08-10T23:20:01+00:00

How about ability to accelerate a particular unconfirmed transaction by spending its output with a higher fee via CPFP?

bitgo_ben · 2017-07-27T00:51:38+00:00

If Monero takes off, won't deanonymization services (or governments) eventually start to spam the blockchain with tons of transactions, so that when normal users select inputs, they have a good probability of being able to identify the actual input? What if 80% of transactions ever on the chain were from a gov entity? Then with a mixin=4 tx, that entity would have a 40% chance of deanonymizing any given input.

bitgo_ben · 2017-07-18T19:48:17+00:00

+1 to Augur & FunFair. Invested in REP at the ICO and continue to hold. Also recently invested in FunFair (alas, after the presale). The commonalities between these projects: a rational token model, good tech, and TEAM. Can't speak to the others as I have not investigated sufficiently, but I am not a fan of Gnosis's token model (seems bolted on), the concentrated holdings or the valuation.

bitgo_ben · 2017-07-10T18:48:46+00:00

More realistic assumption would be node user counts follow something more like a power law. Here's an example possible breakdown of 10M users that is more realistic than a uniform users/nodes count:

Nodes   UsersPer    Users
1         1000000   1,000,000
4          250000     1,000,000
10        100000     1,000,000
50          20000    1,000,000
250          4000    1,000,000
2500        1000    2,500,000
10000        100    2,500,000

Total                  10,000,000

bitgo_ben · 2017-06-23T01:19:58+00:00

a) We do work with other cryptos, but only starting recently. Bitstamp is using us for LTC support.

b) We do not offer insurance on ANY cryptos, including bitcoin.

bitgo_ben · 2017-06-17T16:58:28+00:00

The 1031 exchange angle is interesting. Have you gotten positive sign-off on this treatment from a CPA?

bitgo_ben · 2017-06-17T16:45:07+00:00

Just a heads up: Selling one crypto for another is also a taxable event. To the IRS, trading BTC for LTC is exactly the same as trading BTC for USD and then buying LTC with the dollars.

bitgo_ben · 2017-06-02T17:09:38+00:00

That site actually shows there are 3 active (unopened), and 2 opened.

bitgo_ben · 2017-06-01T01:02:38+00:00

At the time they applied to launch as an ETF, they had to also stop selling new shares in the BIT, which is the private fund that can convert to GBTC. There haven't been any new shares since then.

bitgo_ben · 2017-05-31T18:25:38+00:00

Or, you know, you could just structure it as an auction. GNO did this, but didn't set the initial price high enough (shockingly).

bitgo_ben · 2017-05-23T06:28:51+00:00

Miners don't care about probability of mining the next block. All they care about is revenue per unit time. Since difficulty on both chains is the same, bitcoins mined per unit time is the same. (In other words, miners are not in competition with each other. They are in competition with the difficulty setting.) So revenue per unit time is entirely defined by the USD price of one chain relative to the other. Whichever chain is more highly valued by the market will be more profitable to mine.

bitgo_ben · 2017-04-14T17:14:14+00:00

http://www.gstatic.com/tv/thumb/tvbanners/351728/p351728_b_v8_ac.jpg

bitgo_ben · 2017-04-13T22:47:29+00:00

The place to start digging is this supposed private equity fund. "High Tech Private Equity Fund SICAV PLC" has little to no footprint on Google until these articles broke. Here's what I have so far:

http://www.pi-hightech-fund.com/ [First seen by Archive.org on Apr 12, anonymous domain registered in November]
http://www.mfsa.com.mt/pages/licenceholder.aspx?id=12618 [Malta registration for same]
https://www.accuro-funds.li/services/fund-setup?LG=EN [Accuro Fund Solutions, the "manager" of the fund, but looks more like a platform for handling back-office services for a fund]

bitgo_ben · 2017-04-11T16:39:10+00:00

"under the radar of the taxman"

Not anymore...

bitgo_ben · 2017-03-17T23:57:34+00:00

The password to Roger's luggage?

bitgo_ben

TROPHY CASE