China Bans Payment Companies From Clearing Bitcoin -- BitcoinNewsPortal

China Bans Payment Companies From Clearing Bitcoin

Chinese central bank officials told third-party payment service providers to stop offering clearing services to online Bitcoin exchanges, according to China Business News, which is affiliated with the Shanghai government.

Companies currently offering services must end services by the Chinese New Year, a weeklong holiday that begins on Jan. 31, the newspaper cited Zhou Jinhuang, deputy director of payment clearance at the People’s Bank of China, as saying at a meeting with more than 10 third-party payment service providers.

China’s central bank regulated the virtual currency for the first time on Dec. 5 by banning financial institutions and payment providers from conducting transactions in the virtual currency. Zhou was cited as saying by China Business News that the rules would be “strictly enforced.”

“The PBOC statement on Dec. 5 was somewhat vague and there is more clarity now,” Zennon Kapron, managing director of financial consultancy Kapronasia, said in an interview in Shanghai. “The way it’s reading now is that after the Chinese New Year, you won’t be able to get your money off the platforms.”

The PBOC’s news department didn’t immediately comment on the Bitcoin report when contacted by Bloomberg News. Two calls to Li Yue, director general of the central bank’s payment and settlement department, were unanswered.

Bank Ban

Bitcoin prices on BTC China, China’s largest exchange, plunged to as low as 3,251 yuan ($535) Dec.17,2013 before rebounding to 4,155 yuan at 4:16 p.m. local time. The drop in prices was triggered by concern that PBOC officials may visit lenders next to enforce the ban against Bitcoin settlement, Kapron said. The number of banks and payment providers that can transact Bitcoin has shrunk since the ban was announced, he said.

Bitcoin prices on the CoinDesk index jumped as much as 11 times since October, prompting former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to call the market a “bubble.”

Speculation that authorities in China may halt trading in Bitcoin surfaced after police arrested three people on suspicion of stealing money from investors through a fake online exchange.

GBL, a Bitcoin trading platform in China that began operating in May and had 4,493 registered users at the end of September, abruptly closed on Oct. 26, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Dec. 3., citing police in eastern Zhejiang privince’s Dongyang city.

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How to choose wallet for different devices

How to choose wallet for different devices  

Your Bitcoin wallet is what allows you to transact with other users. It gives you ownership of a Bitcoin balance so that you can send and receive bitcoins. Just like email, all wallets can interoperate with each other. Before you start with Bitcoin, be sure to read what you need to know first.

Get started fast and easy

• MultiBit is an app you can download for Windows, Mac and Linux.
• Bitcoin Wallet for Android runs on your phone or tablet.

Be part of the Bitcoin network

Do you have a computer that you keep switched on all the time, that's connected to the Internet? You can help the community by simply running the full Bitcoin client on it. The full client is more resource intensive and will take a complete day to synchronize. After that your computer will contribute to the network by checking and relaying transactions.

Software wallets

Software wallets are installed on your computer. They give you complete control over your wallet. You are responsible for protecting your money and doing backups.

          Mobile wallets

     Mobile wallets allow you to bring            Bitcoin with you in your pocket. You       can exchange coins easily and pay      in physical stores by scanning a QR      code or using NFC "tap to pay".

        Web wallets

Web wallets allow you to use Bitcoin anywhere with less effort to protect your wallet. However, you must choose your web wallet with care as they host your bitcoins.                                                          

Bitcoin-Qt

 

MultiBit

 

 

 

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Bitcoins in Space

Richard Branson, the brazen Brit behind Virgin Galactic, made news last week when he announced that he has begun processing Bitcoin payments from would-be space tourists. (A woman in Hawaii has already booked her ticket, the company says.) But it turns out Branson’s not the only Bitcoin enthusiast looking toward the heavens. Jeff Garzik, one of the core developers of the Bitcoin software and a new addition to the team of developers at BitPay, a Bitcoin payment processor, has been quietly working on a side project aimed at making Bitcoin work by satellite.

Garzik first hinted at his intentions during his “State of the Coin” address at aBitcoin conference last year in London, where he briefly mentioned that he was working to launch a satellite that would be paid for in bitcoins. Last month, he announced the full purpose of the satellite. According to Garzik, it will repeatedly transmit the most recent block in the Bitcoin block chain—the latest transaction data processed by the Bitcoin network.

In succession, the block chain represents the entire ledger of Bitcoin transactions. And it’s the task of users—anyone running  a Bitcoin client—to both validate the calculations contained in the blocks and to send requests for new transactions to the peer-to-peer network of some 2000 to 5000 machines running the Bitcoin reference software.

“Without the peer-to-peer payment network, Bitcoin does not function today,” explains Garzik. A coordinated, distributed denial-of-service attack on all peer-to-peer nodes would effectively stop all payments across the network, and this is the threat that he wants to address.

“Use of the payment network is not a technical requirement of Bitcoin. If another mechanism for distributing Bitcoin data existed—be it satellite or flash drive via the postal service—then Bitcoin could continue to survive,” says Garzik.

Satellites do have their own vulnerabilities. It’s possible, for example, to disrupt them with a maneuver resembling a denial-of-service attack called double illumination, which simply jams the satellite with signals from overlapping frequencies. If the interference is strong enough, it can effectively cut satellite transmissions.

But Garzik is not looking for a single, foolproof solution. As he describes it, this is more of a move to diversify. “The general idea is the need to find varied means for block-chain data-set distribution,” he says. “We need all the resilience we can muster. Satellite distribution of public block-chain data would facilitate some level of resilience, as well as perhaps enabling use in geographic areas where Internet connectivity is unavailable or spotty.”

For the first phase of the project, Garzik is looking into CubeSats, miniature satellites that weigh only about a kilogram. The most likely scenario would be to hitch a ride on a rocket as a secondary payload. Lockheed Martin, for example, is working on a program that by 2015 would offer ride shares for CubeSats through its Athena launch services.

If he goes this route, Garzik won’t be able to precisely control which orbit theCubeSat ends up in. “Having a network of ground stations is critical to account for multiple orbits that might be achieved,” he says. These stations will then be responsible for transmitting block-chain updates to the satellite.

Garzik estimates that the cost of construction and launch will be about US $2 million and says that if necessary, he will be able to fund the first phase of the project on his own—with bitcoins. But he expects a lot of help. Last week, he set up a Bitcoin address for donations and has already received 25 bitcoins (more than US $20 000) from a group called BitcoinGrant.org.

Although Garzik has not offered a definitive accounting of how this money will be spent, the public nature of the Bitcoin block chain will enable donors to track where their money goes. “My ‘bitcoins in space’ project has a public, trackable donation address,” says Garzik. “If other space partners accept Bitcoin, we are able to disclose and track those purchases as well.”

If the first launch is a success, Garzik intends to follow up with more satellites. “In the short term, there are sufficient people interested in the Bitcoin community that fully funding Phase 1 is assured,” he says. “Based on the same factors and expressed interest, it seems likely that at least one demonstration satellite can be funded and flown in a three- to five-year time frame. Additional interest and funding will dictate how large the network may grow. At worst, listeners may have to wait a few hours to tune in and receive their block-chain broadcast, rather than a fully real-time feed that a cluster of satellites may provide.”

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How does bitcoin work ?

Lets understand how does bitcoin work --

The basics for a new user

As a new user, you can get started with Bitcoin without understanding the technical details. Once you have installed a Bitcoin wallet on your computer or mobile phone, it will generate your first Bitcoin address and you can create more whenever you need one. You can disclose your addresses to your friends so that they can pay you or vice versa. In fact, this is pretty similar to how email works, except that Bitcoin addresses should only be used once.

 

Balances - block chain

The block chain is a shared public ledger on which the entire Bitcoin network relies. All confirmed transactions are included in the block chain. This way, Bitcoin wallets can calculate their spendable balance and new transactions can be verified to be spending bitcoins that are actually owned by the spender. The integrity and the chronological order of the block chain are enforced with cryptography.

Transactions - private keys

A transaction is a transfer of value between Bitcoin wallets that gets included in the block chain. Bitcoin wallets keep a secret piece of data called a private key or seed, which is used to sign transactions, providing a mathematical proof that they have come from the owner of the wallet. The signature also prevents the transaction from being altered by anybody once it has been issued. All transactions are broadcast between users and usually begin to be confirmed by the network in the following 10 minutes, through a process called mining.

Processing - mining

Mining is a distributed consensus system that is used to confirm waiting transactions by including them in the block chain. It enforces a chronological order in the block chain, protects the neutrality of the network, and allows different computers to agree on the state of the system. To be confirmed, transactions must be packed in a block that fits very strict cryptographic rules that will be verified by the network. These rules prevent previous blocks from being modified because doing so would invalidate all following blocks. Mining also creates the equivalent of a competitive lottery that prevents any individual from easily adding new blocks consecutively in the block chain. This way, no individuals can control what is included in the block chain or replace parts of the block chain to roll back their own spends.

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Bitcoins hits 1 billions of US Dollars

Bitcoin, the world’s first open-source cryptographic currency, which has been on a tear since the beginning of this year, set a new record on 28 March, when the price listed on the largest online exchange rose past US $95. With nearly 11 million bitcoins in circulation, this sets the total worth of the currency at just over $1 billion.

For a bit of perspective, that’s how much Facebook spent on its acquisition of Instagram last April. But Bitcoin is not a company. It’s a digital currency that runs on a global peer-to-peer network without the backing of a nation or any other central authority. The recent ascent has traditional economists scratching their heads.

“It’s something of a mystery that Bitcoin has a positive value at all, since it wasn’t launched in the way a new currency is typically launched,” says Lawrence White, an economist who teaches the history of banking and money at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va.

“Typically, if a country wants to introduce a new currency, they make it redeemable for the old currency at a fixed exchange rate, and then after a while they cut off the link and retire the old currency,” White says. “But they launch the new currency by giving people a sort of firm expectation of what it’s worth. Bitcoin didn’t do that. It just launched itself by its own bootstraps, and we don’t really understand how that worked, as economists.”

Recent events suggest that many of the people who are using Bitcoin don’t want to replicate these old models. Much of the recent interest in Bitcoin is coming from places like Cyprus, whose desperate proposals for economic reform threaten to plunder the savings of its people.

Take what happened on 19 March, for example. In its bargaining for a €10 billion bailout from its European lenders, the Cypriot government instituted a bank holiday as it considered economic reforms that would impose severe levies on many bank deposits. As the situation became more chaotic, Cypriots who found themselves suddenly cut off from their savings accounts began downloading Bitcoin iPhone apps. That day, there was a steep increase in downloads of Bitcoin Gold, an application that tracks the exchange rate of Bitcoin. In rankings of finance-related downloads by popularity, the app went from 1171 to 104.

Without access to their money, it’s unlikely that many Cypriots were able to buy bitcoins at that time. But interest in the currency peaked in other countries as well. Spain, which has kept a close eye on the developments in Cyprus, showed a similar spike on 17 March, and downloads in the United States jumped a few days later, indicating that when government currencies fray, Bitcoin begins to look a little more like a safe haven and a little less like a crazy techno-utopian experiment.

But if Bitcoin is to function as a proper currency, people will have to be able to spend it as well as save it. This month, Bitcoin recruited a couple of high-profile merchants. On 14 February, Reddit began accepting the currency from customers signed up for its Gold membership. Two days later, Kim Dotcom announced via his Twitter feed that people could start using bitcoins to buy access to his new file-sharing service, Mega.

Since then, transactions in the Bitcoin network have increased significantly. For most of 2012, before the price of Bitcoin began its dramatic upward surge, daily transactions totaled about 200 000 bitcoins. Now that number tends to be around 300 000, suggesting that more people are using the currency to make purchases.

BitPay, one of the most successful Bitcoin payment processors, reports a similar trend. In March alone it set a new record, processing more than $2 million worth of Bitcoin transactions for its clients—nearly two-thirds of what the company managed in all of 2012.

“We see somewhat of a wealth effect,” says Anthony Gallippi, the CEO and cofounder of BitPay. “As the price rises, people do tend to spend money. When the price falls is when they tend to spend less.”

All of this is a big deal for Bitcoin. But making it into the Billion Dollar Club is not enough to impress professional investors, it seems. When asked whether Bitcoin’s aggressive ascent was turning any heads, Michael Kagan, the senior portfolio manager at ClearBridge Investments, had this to say: “I just don’t feel comfortable getting involved with something vulnerable to being hacked or manipulated, and with no recompense if it is. If I wanted to invest in something as an abstract store of value, I would buy gold.”

Maybe someday Bitcoin will gain its Wall Street cred. Until then, early adopters can at least bask in the glory of bewildering a whole generation of economic theorists.

A billion dollars may be small on a global scale, but it’s certainly hard to ignore. Perhaps the movie version of Napster cofounder Sean Parker in The Social Network, as portrayed by Justin Timberlake, put it best: “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.”

This article was previously published as a blog post on 29 March.

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What is Bitcoin address ?

What is Bitcoin address ?

Like e-mail, you can send bitcoins to a person by sending bitcoins to one of their addresses. A person can have many different Bitcoin addresses and, for increased privacy and as the only way to know what the bitcoins are received for/from, it is recommended that you use a unique address for each transaction. Most Bitcoin software and websites will help with this by generating a brand new address each time you perform a transaction. Some services provide a facility to request a new Bitcoin address for use with their service when desired.
Samples of Bitcoin address-- b56M5gunupShBVTewXjtqbBv5MndwfXhb.
When using a web site that accepts bitcoins or holds Bitcoin balances on your behalf, that website will assign a Bitcoin address to your account, so you can transfer funds into your account at the site. Very much unlike e-mail, this address may change every time funds come in so care should be taken when sending additional funds to a previously-used address. When you send Bitcoins to your account at a web site, they will usually be credited to your account at that web site after the transaction is confirmed (Network Users).

# Bitcoin addresses are Unique and never reveal your identity.
# Bitcoin address can be created offline using your wallet.
# There is no limit on no. of bitcoin address created by you.(Use        new B address for every new transaction for better privacy.)

Now what is bitcoin address technically .Lets understand its concept.
Most Bitcoin addresses are 34 characters. They consist of random digits and uppercase and lowercase letters, with the exception that the uppercase letter "O", uppercase letter "I", lowercase letter "l", and the number "0" are never used to prevent visual ambiguity.
Some Bitcoin addresses can be shorter than 34 characters (as few as 27 in theory) and still be valid. A significant percentage of Bitcoin addresses are only 33 characters, and some addresses may be even shorter. Every Bitcoin address stands for a number - somewhat like an account number. These shorter addresses are valid simply because they stand for numbers that happen to start with zeroes, and when the zeroes are omitted, the encoded address gets shorter.

Several of the characters inside a Bitcoin address are used as a checksum so that typographical errors can be automatically found and rejected. The checksum also allows Bitcoin software to confirm that a 33-character (or shorter) address is in fact valid and isn't simply an address with a missing character.

Bicoin News Portal

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Important things about Bitcoins -- Bitcoin News Portal

Important things you need to know about Bitcoins

If you are about to explore Bitcoin, there are a few things you should know. Bitcoin lets you exchange money in a different way than with usual banks. As such, you should take time to inform yourself before using Bitcoin for any serious transaction. Bitcoin should be treated with the same care as your regular wallet, or even more in some cases!

Securing your wallet

Like in real life, your wallet must be secured. Bitcoin makes it possible to transfer value anywhere in a very easy way and it allows you to be in control of your money. Such great features also come with great security concerns. At the same time, Bitcoin can provide very high levels of security if used correctly. Always remember that it is your responsibility to adopt good practices in order to protect your money. Read more about securing your wallet.

Bitcoin price is volatile

The price of a bitcoin can unpredictably increase or decrease over a short period of time due to its young economy, novel nature, and sometimes illiquid markets. Consequently, keeping your savings with Bitcoin is not recommended at this point. Bitcoin should be seen like a high risk asset, and you should never store money that you cannot afford to lose with Bitcoin. If you receive payments with Bitcoin, many service providers can convert them to your local currency.

Bitcoin payments are irreversible

Any transaction issued with Bitcoin cannot be reversed, they can only be refunded by the person receiving the funds. That means you should take care to do business with people and organizations you know and trust, or who have an established reputation. For their part, businesses need to keep control of the payment requests they are displaying to their customers. Bitcoin can detect typos and usually won't let you send money to an invalid address by mistake. Additional services might exist in the future to provide more choice and protection for the consumer.

Bitcoin is not anonymous

Some effort is required to protect your privacy with Bitcoin. All Bitcoin transactions are stored publicly and permanently on the network, which means anyone can see the balance and transactions of any Bitcoin address. However, the identity of the user behind an address remains unknown until information is revealed during a purchase or in other circumstances. This is one reason why Bitcoin addresses should only be used once. Always remember that it is your responsibility to adopt good practices in order to protect your privacy. Read more about protecting your privacy.

Instant transactions are less secure

A Bitcoin transaction is usually deployed within a few seconds and begins to be confirmed in the following 10 minutes. During that time, a transaction can be considered authentic but still reversible. Dishonest users could try to cheat. If you can't wait for a confirmation, asking for a small transaction fee or using a detection system for unsafe transactions can increase security. For larger amounts like 1000 US$, it makes sense to wait for 6 confirmations or more. Each confirmationexponentially decreases the risk of a reversed transaction.

Bitcoin is still experimental

Bitcoin is an experimental new currency that is in active development. Although it becomes less experimental as usage grows, you should keep in mind that Bitcoin is a new invention that is exploring ideas that have never been attempted before. As such, its future cannot be predicted by anyone.

Don't forget government taxes

Bitcoin is not an official currency. That said, most jurisdictions still require you to pay income, sales, payroll, and capital gains taxes on anything that has value, including Bitcoin.

Source-Bitcoin News Portal

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What are Bitcoins -- Digital Currency

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency. Peer-to-peer means that no central authority issues new money or tracks transactions. These tasks are managed collectively by the network.
According to wikipedia,
Bitcoin is an experimental, decentralized digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network.

The original Bitcoin software by Satoshi Nakamoto was released under the MIT license. Most client software, derived or "from scratch", also use open source licensing.
Bitcoin is one of the first successful implementations of a distributed crypto-currency, described in part in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list. Building upon the notion that money is any object, or any sort of record, accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context, Bitcoin is designed around the idea of using cryptography to control the creation and transfer of money, rather than relying on central authorities.

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Basic Guide to Bitcoins Mining

Basic Guide to Bitcoins Mining

One of the biggest problems I ran into when I was looking to start mining Bitcoin for investment and profit was most of the sites were written for the advanced user. I am not a professional coder, I have no experience with Ubuntu, Linux and minimal experience with Mac. So, this is for the individual or group that wants to get started the easy way.

First thing you need to do is get a “Bitcoin Wallet”. Because Bitcoin is an internet based currency, you need a place to keep your Bitcoins. Got to http://www.bitcoin.org and download the Bitcoin client for your Operating System. Install it the client will begin to download the blockchain. Downloading the blockchain can take a long time and will be over 6GB of data. If you have data caps, I would recommend ordering a copy of the blockchain on DVD to keep from going over as it is growing exponentially. Click to order the bitcoin blockchain by mail. Once the client is up to date, click “New” to get your wallet address. It will be a long sequence of letters and numbers. One of most important things you can do is make sure you have a copy of the wallet.dat file on a thumb drive and print a copy out and keep it in a safe location. You can view a tutorial on how to create a secure wallet by clicking the link on the top of the page. The reason is that if you computer crashes and you do not have a copy of your wallet.dat file, you will lose all of your Bitcoins. They won’t go to someone else, they will disappear forever. It is like burning cash.

Now that you have a wallet and the client, you are probably roaring to go, but if you actually want to make Bitcoin (money), you probably need to join a pool. A pool is a group that combines their computing power to make more Bitcoins. The reason you shouldn’t go it alone is that Bitcoins are awarded in blocks, usually 50 at a time, and unless you get extremely lucky, you will not be getting any of those coins. In a pool, you are given smaller and easier algorithms to solve and all of your combined work will make you more likely to solve the bigger algorithm and earn Bitcoins that are spread out throughout the pool based on your contribution. Basically, you will make a more consistent amount of Bitcoins and will be more likely to receive a good return on your investment.

The pool that I’m involved in is called Slush’s Pool so I will be giving instructions on how to join there but feel free to look at other options. Follow the link to go to their site and click the “Sign up here” link at the top of their site and follow their step by step instructions. After you have your account set up, you will need to add a “Worker”. Basically, for every miner that you have running, you will need to have a worker ID so the pool can keep track of your contributions.

If you are mining with an ASIC, please go to our Mining with ASICs page. The following will only pertain to GPU miners.

Most of the mining programs out there are pretty complicated to setup and will frustrate your average user. Recently a great program has come out to get the most basic of users started. The program is called GUIMiner. Click the link and download the program (Be careful, some of the ads are set up to look like the file download). Install and run the program and add in your information from Slush’s Pool. Remember that the user name is actually the worker name. The worker name will be your user name, dot, worker ID (username.worker ID) and the password from that worker ID.

Now that you are set up you can start mining. If you feel like you want to make more Bitcoins, you might want to invest in mining hardware.

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