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October 27th, 2017- In This Issue:



With the next bitcoin fork on the  horizon we'd like say a few words  which will hopefully alleviate some  of the unnecessary fears purposely perpetuated by those that profit from  fear & uncertainty. 

A lot of fud is  always going around about hardforks, bitcoin splitting, the community being  at war, etc etc.
 
Most of this kinda talk is a lotta hullabaloo  about nothing, "fake news" I expect the segwit2x fork to have little effect, other than when it's over the last few remaining clouds of doubt will be lifted and bitcoin will be free to continue unfettered.. until the next man made/trader made controversy appears that is.

For additional clarity on the segwit2x debate please read the article below.

Tell your friends, the relatives you still like and anyone else you truly care about, about bitcoin, give them a chance to take advantage of what may turn out to be the greatest opportunity for financial gain in a generation. 

Happy trading and good luck to us all.


Visit  BitvestIRA  for information on using your IRA to invest in bitcoin at 20% below spot price. Or call us directly with any questions at 1-844-BIT-VEST (1-844-248-8378)

Bitcoin's Upcoming SegWit2x Hard Fork, Put in Layman's Terms




You may have noticed the increase in Segwit2x news, opinion, posts, rants, and memes circulating throughout various media sources. You may have seen some of this media and been completely lost, as if you were reading a different language.

The entire debate can get pretty technical and you may be wondering if you should be concerned by the increasing number of rants you see on r/Bitcoin regarding the  fork. To make Segwit2x clear, I will be breaking down the hardfork and putting it in layman's terms.

Legacy Bitcoin

We will call today's version of Bitcoin "legacy Bitcoin." Right now, there is a  1 MB limit to the size of blocks . This was done by Satoshi to keep network nodes from coming under attack when Bitcoin was very young. He picked 1 MB as the limit because blocks were 99% empty at the time, and he expected there would be plenty of time to upgrade the system later when needed.
As Bitcoin grew more popular, the network had so many transactions to process that the transactions were beginning to pile up and form a queue. Blocks are discovered roughly every ten minutes, but in ten minutes' time, there were more than 1 MB of transactions, causing some to be delayed until a future, emptier block could be mined.
The congestion caused delays in the amount of time it took for a transaction to be verified and applied pressure on the senders in a transaction to increase their transaction (tx) fee. This fee incentivizes miners to include that transaction in the current block. As blocks filled up, the fee needed to be included in a new block rose proportionally. Bitcoin transactions began to get very expensive, if senders paid higher fees, or very slow, if senders chose to pay lesser fees.

The Solution: Segwit

Bitcoin's Core developers eventually came up with a solution: Segregated Witness (SegWit). SegWit is included in Bitcoin's current software. It works by separating the transaction data from the signature data; this packs up to four times as many transactions into a block. More importantly, SegWit fixed a few other bugs within the software and that sets the stage for potential future upgrades to the network like the lightning network.

So, what is Segwit2x?

Not everybody was happy with just implementing  SegWit, and preferred to increase the maximum size of Bitcoin's blocks as well. This would give the network some more room for growth while lightning network was being deployed. Bitcoin's Core developers do not want to increase the block size, primarily because that involves a hard fork, which is potentially dangerous. A hard fork happens when computers running new versions of the software are no longer compatible with computers that run the old (legacy) version. If done incorrectly, this can cause really bad things to happen.



Why Bitcoin Matters More Than Blockchain




Bitcoin is going to do to banks what email did the post office and Amazon did to retail. Understandably those at the center of the financial system are concerned.

The banker's mantra of "blockchain not bitcoin" has caught fire on Wall Street - everybody loves blockchain, they may not know what it is, but they love it! Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, hates Bitcoin, but loves blockchain, Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, has embraced blockchain while he is warming to Bitcoin. Admittedly, I suffered from the same love affair with blockchain. As an early adopter of Bitcoin I still had feelings for the currency, but for a period of time I was infatuated with blockchain.

Bitcoin is a lot of things to a lot of people, but to me it's easiest to think of it as software. Bitcoin is a software program that allows people to securely transfer money over the internet without a bank. It does this by replacing the function of a bank with a network of computers running the software that verifies and transfers the money. These computers, known as miners, maintain a global ledger of transactions that is used to validate, verify and transfer money.



People are 'underestimating' the 'great potential' of bitcoin, billionaire Peter Thiel says




People are "underestimating"  bitcoin and it has "great potential left," billionaire investor  Peter Thiel said on Thursday.

Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Thiel compared the cryptocurrency bitcoin to  gold.

"I'm skeptical of most of them (cryptocurrencies), I do think people are a little bit ... underestimating bitcoin especially because ... it's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments," Thiel said.

"If bitcoin ends up being the cyber equivalent of gold it has a great potential left."

There has been rising interest in bitcoin this year. The cryptocurrency recently hit a  new record high above $6,100 and has rallied over 500 percent this year.

Thiel said that bitcoin is based on the "security of the math" which means it can't be hacked and it's secure. The  PayPal founder and venture capitalist compared some of bitcoin's features to gold.



TOM LEE: Bitcoin is an important asset for investors to own




Bitcoin is the hottest topic in markets right now.

And while some big-name investors have called Bitcoin a "fraud" and a bubble, Fundstrat's Tom Lee made the case at Yahoo Finance's All Markets Summit on Wednesday that the cryptocurrency is an important asset for investors to own.

"I think cryptocurrencies are a very important technology," Lee said.
"It's a huge revolution in terms of decentralized control. It's biomimicry, finally, in the technology industry. A proper structure for maintaining encryption and security. But because of the nature of blockchain it's also an asset class.

"And I think this year has proven that Bitcoin is uncorrelated to equities, gold, interest rates, commodities. It's an important security, I think, for investors to own."

Lee also outlined how Bitcoin is following Metcalfe's Law, which essentially sketches out the value of a network based on how many users it has.

"If you modeled something as simple as square the number of users plus transaction value, it's explained 94% of [Bitcoin's price appreciation] this year," Lee said.

And this chart from an earlier research note published by Fundstrat outlines this dynamic of the Bitcoin network's usage and the increase in its price.




India Goes Bitcoin: Zebpay Will Add 500k Users Monthly by 2018




Indian Bitcoin exchange  Zebpay is adding 200,000 users a month and is eyeing half a mln by the end of 2017.

In an interview with  Forbes India, the exchange, which is one of the country's 'big names' in Bitcoin along with  Unocoin and  Coinsecure, described recent market transformation as "crazy."

"It is crazy now. But when we started Zebpay we had no idea the price would shoot up," Zeb Ventures CEO and co-founder Saurabh Agrawal commented. "We were here to build a business model and not play the valuation game."

In September Zebpay  passed 1 mln downloads of its mobile app for Bitcoin trading, just three months after the 500,000 mark in May.

Unocoin has reported  similar successes, with Indians increasingly turning to Bitcoin interaction in the face of currency shake-ups and bank bailouts.



IRS raises 2018 contribution limit for qualified plans to $18,500



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The Internal Revenue Service has raised the contribution limits for employees who participate in 401(k), 403(b) and most 457 plans to to $18,500 in 2018, up from the current limit of $18,000.

The IRS also increased the income ranges for determining eligibility to make deductible contributions to traditional individual retirement accounts, contribute to Roth IRAs and claim the saver's credit.

For single taxpayers covered by a workplace retirement plan, the phase-out range is $63,000 to $73,000, up from $62,000 to $72,000, the IRS said in a release. For married couples filing jointly, where the spouse making the IRA contribution is covered by a workplace retirement plan, the phase-out range is $101,000 to $121,000, up from $99,000 to $119,000.




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