Editors Note: GoldCore believe that blockchain technology
will revolutionise the world of finance, payments and money and may have an
impact on the world on a scale of that of the internet. Hence, the need
to keep an eye on this very important evolving technology that has
ramifications for us all.
If you thought the internet was disruptive, well you ain’t seen
nothing yet … the blockchain
cometh!
Charlie Morris is the editor of Atlas Pulse – a newsletter
focusing on gold,
bitcoin, blockchain and disruptive technology.. He has written an
excellent article looking at bitcoin, the blockchain and the ramifications
for banks and our financial system.
Symbols for Gold, Bitcoin and Silver – Atlas Pulse
by Charlie Morris
Bitcoin’s had one hell of a year.
The price of a single bitcoin recently touched $500, which is three times
higher than it was in August this year. That’s one hell of a move in a short
space of time and I’m going to try and put that into context.
In November 2013, there were just over 12 million bitcoins in circulation
and the price touched $1,200, meaning the network was briefly worth $14.4bn.
This new form of electronic money had high hopes and some felt it would
genuinely catch on as it had the potential to challenge the existing system
in global payments.
Bitcoin clearly got ahead of itself and the excitement about the future of
money took a turn for the worse.
There were scandals such as the loss of bitcoins at the MT Gox exchange (a
bitcoin trading platform), the closure of the Silk Road website (drugs and
other bad things) and the banning of bitcoin wallets by Apple (users could no
longer transact on their phones).
The lowest ebb came in January this year when the network value briefly
dropped below $ bn, a 77% contraction. Many high profile commentators wrote
off bitcoin and predicted a future value below $1.
Today the bitcoin network appears to be alive and well. It recently saw
total daily transaction volumes rise above $300m. This growth in usage from
$50m per day in the summer has caused the price to surge. At $500 per
bitcoin, the network value recently touched $7.4bn.
This resurgence is all the more surprising because there have been
so many barriers in its path. Regulators have put bitcoin businesses under
heavy scrutiny and most banks have refused to deal with them, despite being
legitimate and innovative enterprises. In fact, George Osborne showed public
support for bitcoin and wants Britain to be a hub for these disruptive
technologies.
Before we go into further detail, let’s take a step back and
remind ourselves what bitcoin actually is.
In simple terms, bitcoin is electronic cash. It was created on the
Internet by ‘miners’ and can be transacted with anyone else who has a bitcoin
‘wallet’. It can’t be copied, cut or pasted, nor can they be minted to
infinity.
As I said, there are 14.8 million bitcoins in circulation, and
each day approximately 4,000 new coins are created. In exchange for
validating all of the transactions carried out by the community, the miners
receive the new coins plus some transaction fees. Yesterday’s payout to the
miners was roughly $2m. Yes, you read that correctly.
Given the vast rewards, this process is highly competitive and if you want
to mine bitcoins, you’ll need a super computer bigger than GCHQ’s and Nasa’s
combined; I’m not exaggerating.
The miners work hard for their money and their primary task is to validate
a ‘block’ of transactions every ten minutes (or by my calculations, every 9
minutes and 41 seconds on average). In financial terms, they carry out the
‘settlement’ for bitcoin and perform record keeping functions.
There are roughly 153 blocks created each and every day. They stack up on
top of each other and, since bitcoin’s birth on 3rd January 2009, this
process has occurred over 382,000 times. Hence the phrase ‘blockchain’ as the
transaction data is stored as a ‘chain of blocks’.
The true genius of bitcoin is that it has been built using a database that
was designed to transact, whereas a traditional database was designed to
store information.
Financial transactions use traditional databases that were invented
decades ago. In order for them to transact, they dive inside the computer,
find the data they are looking for, change it and then climb back out. That
system has worked well, but now the world has something better.
With a blockchain, instead of finding and changing the data, the
system continuously adds new layers whilst the past records remain unchanged.
This has improved speed, security, transparency and record keeping whilst
simultaneously slashing costs.
Crucially, the bitcoin ecosystem is operated by the ‘invisible hand’.
There are no employees or maintenance staff behind it. Ask a bank how many
people sit in their IT department and the answer will be in the tens of
thousands. Bitcoin has survived for nearly seven years with no employees
whatsoever, just an open-source community of coders who implement periodic
improvements.
Crucially, the bitcoin network is ‘de-centralised’. A bank may backup its
database several times, but for bitcoin, there are 5,625 copies (at the last
count), known as ‘nodes’. In order to shut down bitcoin, you would need to
destroy every single one. That would mean a coordinated effort from 90
different countries including Zimbabwe, Russia and Iran. Good luck with that;
the bitcoin network is here to stay.
What can you do with bitcoin?
You can spend it in a growing list of places although, I readily admit, it
is far from mainstream. As I said on my recent podcast, I managed to buy a
glass of wine in Chamonix and a cup of coffee in Shoreditch, but little else.
That has hardly changed the face of money, but entrepreneurs have created
credit cards that transact using bitcoin. That means it is potentially
acceptable whenever you see the Visa or Mastercard symbol.
Wall Street has seen this blockchain technology and has taken it into the
fold. The banks that intend to survive know that if they don’t take the lead,
they’ll die. Those that fail to take an interest will get left behind and so
there’s much at stake.
The recent surge in price from $160 in August to $500 was an explosive
move. The FT has attributed this to a Russian pyramid scheme called MMM, that
has taken off in China. I’m sure this explains much of the recent exuberance,
but underlying that, is a self-sustaining network that enjoys underlying
growth.
Speculative flurries will come and go but what I am interested in is the
trend. If the real usage of bitcoin grows, the price can only rise. We should
think of bitcoin like a technology stock where the value is directly related
to the size of the network.
This article is from the free daily email Capital & Conflict
as published by Money
Week. Charlie Morris is the editor of Atlas
Pulse; a newsletter focusing on gold, disruptive technology and
blockchains.
Protecting Your Savings In The Coming Bail-In Era – Download
Must Read Guide
DAILY PRICESToday’s Gold Prices: USD 1070.50, EUR 1005.95 and GBP
702.74 per ounce.
Yesterday’s Gold Prices: USD 1080.80, EUR 1013.60 and GBP 710.50 per ounce.
(LBMA AM)
Gold in USD – 10 Year
Gold closed yesterday at $1069.50, down $13.70 for the day.
Silver was down $0.06 closing at $14.21. Platinum lost $12 to $851.
Gold is steady but set a fresh near six-year low overnight –
the lowest since Feb 2010 – at $1,064.95/oz, after falling 1.2% yesterday. It
was gold’s biggest one-day drop in more than a week, and its 21st down day in
24. Gold’s 14-day relative strength index (RSI) remains in oversold territory
(below 30) for a tenth session, at 22.5.
Silver is 0.1% higher, platinum‘s a touch lower, and palladium is down
0.4%.
Global silver supplies in 2015 are in deficit for the third straight
year as mine production sees its smallest rise in more than a decade, scrap
returns drop and miners reduce their hedge positions, a Thomson Reuters GFMS
analyst said on Tuesday.
Total silver supply is forecast to fall to 1.01 billion ounces in 2015
– down 3.3 percent from 2014 – with physical demand falling to a lesser
degree, down 2.5 percent to 1.06 billion ounces, said Erica Rannestad, senior
analyst on the GFMS team presenting the report at a Silver Institute dinner
in New York. This brings GFMS’ 2015 silver supply/demand forecast to an
annual physical deficit of 42.7 million ounces.
Gunfire and explosions shook the Paris suburb of St Denis early on
Wednesday as French police surrounded a building where a Belgian Islamist
militant suspected of masterminding last week’s attacks in the French capital
was believed to be holed up. Two assailants were killed, including a woman
who detonated a suicide bomb, a source close to the case said, adding that
the police operation was continuing to flush out two other suspects. The
target of the raid, which filled the streets of St Denis with heavily armed
police and soldiers, was Islamic State militant Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was
initially thought to have orchestrated the Paris attacks from Syria, police
and justice sources said. (Reuters)
Air strikes carried out by French jets and other forces have killed at
least 33 Islamic State militants in the group’s Raqqa stronghold in Syria
over the past three days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring
group said on Wednesday. Citing activists, the Observatory also said that
Islamic State members and dozens of the families of senior members had
started leaving Raqqa city to relocate to Mosul in Iraq because of security
concerns. Mosul is also controlled by Islamic State. (Reuters)
