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November 9th, 2017- In This Issue:



Bitcoin's Wild Ride is leaving some investors dazed and confused

After the surprising announcement yesterday that the developers backing Segwit2x have cancelled (for now) the software upgrade to 2 megabytes scheduled for November 16th, the market doesn't seem ready to process whether this is a good or bad thing. 

Shortly after the announcement bitcoin shot up to a high of $7,888 before coming back to reality in the low $7,000 range where we are trading now.

The fact that the price has stabilized today close to $7,200 is a very good sign for the future as it seems that nothing in the way of what may have seemed to be adverse news can stop or even slow bitcoin's accumulation. 

For now we will withhold judgement as to whether we feel that the abrupt change of plans was a good thing. Frankly we were looking forward to the freebie coins and that is a bit of a disappointment for a lot of folks that had anticipated another (dividend) airdrop.

Going forward not much has changed, the fact that bitcoin is now becoming part of many mainstream investors portfolios has completely changed the dynamic and we expect that to continue unabated.

As always, buy the dips, don't let anyone pry away the bitcoin that you already  have and remember to tell your friends and loved ones about what may turn out to be the very best investment opportunity of our generation.


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)

Relief and Disbelief: Bitcoin Reacts to Sudden '2x' Suspension




After months of anger and debate, a group of businesses and mining firms that use bitcoin's software to provide services  suddenly shuttered an attempt at changing its rules. Scheduled to be introduced in mid-November, the Segwit2x software had emerged as a controversial bogeyman, a cloud of uncertainty over bitcoin's future, that quickly gave way.

Among those who had for months spoken out against the proposal, and what they perceived as a broken understanding of how protocol development should proceed, euphoria was evident.

"Segwit2x hardfork has been called off! Common sense prevails,"  exclaimed litecoin creator Charlie Lee. "Put a fork in it, it's done," tweeted author Andreas Antonopoulos.

Indeed, the strongest voices in the initial reaction were those who had joined a long-simmering protest movement called "NO2X," which accumulated the support of  dozens of companies and users, who displayed their opposition by adding a prefix to their social media names.

The social media behavior, launched in the wake of Segwit2x's announcement in May, did much to highlight the differing perspectives of the proposal.

An open-source software that requires a diversity of stakeholders to agree to its rules to operate - bitcoin's major  companiesdevelopers and  mining pools have each taken a different view of development and how decisions about updates should be made.

Forged in an invite-only meeting, criticisms of Segwit2x came largely from developers, many of whom didn't necessarily object to the idea larger blocks were needed, but a culture that had sprung up around startups that largely lacked a frame of reference for how network changes had been made, or even the various ways in which changes could be made.

As such, the news could be read as a culmination of a debate that began in 2015, when former bitcoin maintainer Gavin Andresen sought to galvanize interest in a block size change. Since then, several attempts have been made to tweak this aspect of the software.
However, despite its stakeholder support, Segwit2x now joins bitcoin classic, bitcoin unlimited and bitcoin-xt as proposed softwares to fail to gain adoption based on the idea.





"A Very Important Step in Bitcoin's History": CME Pioneer Heralds New Asset Class




CME Group chairman emeritus Leo Melamed is bullish on bitcoin, predicting the cryptocurrency will go on to become a new asset class alongside gold and traditional stocks.

Leo Melamed, widely recognized as the founder of financial futures and the former chairman (chairman emeritus) of the CME Group, sees bitcoin going beyond being a cryptocurrency to becoming a new asset class in its own right.

In an interview with  Reuters, the legendary financial figure spoke about the CME Group's  plans to launch bitcoin futures contracts this year. Melamed expects the launch to open the floodgates for major institutional investors enter the bitcoin space and went on to claim that the CME Group will "tame" it toward mainstream acceptance while playing under regulatory rules.

He told Reuters of the upcoming launch of the futures contract of bitcoin:

That's a very important step for bitcoin's history...We will regulate, make bitcoin not wild, nor wilder. We'll tame it into a regular type instrument of trade with rules.

Melamed further revealed he was a bitcoin-skeptic initially, but the 85-year old financial pioneer soon saw similarities between the cryptocurrency and the International Monetary Market (IMM) currency futures trading he launched as CME's chairman in 1972, which is now one of CME's four major divisions. He now sees the possibility of bitcoin representing a new asset class based on blockchain technology, beyond being a transactional P2P cryptocurrency.



Coinbase User Base Increases by 100,000 Customers in a Single Day



Coinbase is the largest exchange for buying and selling bitcoin in the United States, and a recent announcement in the space has prompted the service to grow even further. 

According to a report by CNBC, roughly 100,000 new users joined the exchange in a single day, following an announcement that the world's largest futures exchange, CME, plans to launch bitcoin futures later in 2017. The boost brings Coinbase's user base up to nearly 12 million customers, according to the service's website.

CME announced on Tuesday that it would launch a bitcoin futures product at some point before the end of this year. The move is expected to provide many large investors who are otherwise restrictred from purchasing bitcoin directly with access to the leading digital currency. The new user pool joined the Coinbase population within a day or so of the Tuesday announcement, per data compiled by Altana Digital Currency Fund's Alistair Milne, the co-founder and CIO. Coinbase was already the largest bitcoin exchange in the United States, and it is also one of the top digital currency exchanges the world over. Besides bitcoin, it offers users access to other digital currencies like ethereum and litecoin as well.



Bitcoin is going mainstream, with a new futures market



The Chicago Mercantile Exchange  will soon begin trading Bitcoin derivatives (futures contracts), signalling the cryptocurrency is now a mainstream asset class. Bitcoin has had limited use in the mainstream economy in part because the volatility of its price. The value of the currency might go up or down significantly between the time a deal is struck and delivery.

The introduction of Bitcoin futures contracts will allow investors to manage this risk, and make it safer to hold and trade in Bitcoin. This will make the cryptocurrency more accessible to individuals and businesses, and encourage developers to build more products and services on top of the technology.

Futures and other derivatives are contracts between two parties to fix the price of an underlying asset (currencies, shares, commodities etc.) over a period of time or for a future transaction. The buyer of these contracts commits to purchase the underlying asset at a set price and at a certain date, and the seller commits to sell.

There are two main uses for these contracts. First, to reduce price risk by freezing future prices. The second use is speculation. For instance, a speculator would commit to buy a commodity/share/currency at a certain time, hoping that the market price at the time of delivery is higher than the price set in the contract.



Bitcoin Prices Still Firmly Above $7,000, Without China




Bitcoin is unstoppable these days, passing one "technical" test after another, crossing the $5,000-mark, the $6,000-mark, and the $7,000-mark in a matter of weeks. The "people's currency" has gained 27.33% in seven days, as market volume increased.

What's behind the digital currency's breathtaking run?

Certainly, it isn't the lifting of regulations which halted trade of digital currency in China, as some expected (back in September, China banned Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and shut Bitcoin exchanges, sending the digital currency's price tumbling from $5,000 to close to $3,000).

Instead, there have been a number of positive developments that helped build investor confidence and hype in the "people's" currency. One of them was the stepping up of government regulations in US and Japan to protect the cryptocurrency markets from possible manipulation, while limiting the supply of new coin offerings.




Bitcoin Bull Raises Bitcoin Price Target to $11,000



Bitcoin bull Ronnie Moas has raised his 2018 bitcoin price target to $11,000.

Moas, a respected market analyst at Standpoint Research, believes that recent announcements such as the introduction of bitcoin futures contracts by derivatives exchange operator CME Group will accelerate the pace of global bitcoin adoption ahead of his already-bullish target.

This is not the only time Moas has raised his bitcoin price target in recent months. Earlier this year, he set a $5,000 bitcoin price target, which he later raised to $7,500 during the market's Q3 surge. Now, as the bitcoin price approaches that revised target, he has written a note to Standpoint clients advising them that he believes the bitcoin price will hit $11,000 in 2018.


People Are Now Searching How to Buy Bitcoin More Than How to Buy Gold



More people are now searching online for how to buy bitcoin than they are expressing interest in buying gold, according to a new report.

Per Bloomberg, the surge in the cryptocurrency's attraction is coinciding with a well-performing U.S. stock market to reduce interest in gold, that traditional safe haven. The news service looked at Google Trends to discover that "buy bitcoin" is now a more popular search term than "buy gold."

It's not hard to see why. Gold has appreciated this year by 11%, while bitcoin has gone up more than 600%, hitting $7,400 on the weekend before retreating below $7,000 (it's $7,193 at the time of writing on Tuesday morning).

According to a New York Times report, big Wall Street investors are also "pouring their money" into the virtual coin, with the number of hedge funds focusing on cryptocurrencies increasing this year from 30 to almost 130.



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