Bitcoin is probably in bubble mode

Bitcoin is probably in bubble mode

I am a big fan of Bitcoin and I’ve been using it since 2012. I was mining for almost 2 years until my electricity was costing me more than the coins I was producing. I’ve worked in few projects that were accepting Bitcoin as payment, processing the transactions and more. During the life of Bitcoin we have seen few bubbles, meaning the price going up parabolic, a lot faster than the previous periods and eventually crashing back. Every time, the price after the crash was higher than the price the rally was starting. I believe we are now in another bubble, prices doubled in about a month and we see big gains daily. This is unsustainable and eventually all markets with these characteristics are correcting themselves. The only questions no one can answer is how high it will go before the crash and when it will happen. In the long term I believe Bitcoin will worth more than what it is now but be careful when buying Bitcoins now. Why buy now when you can buy in few days or weeks with a discount. There is no doubt that Bitcoin has now far more users and investors and that is why the price is so high (over $2200) but that doesn’t mean it can continue playing the greater fool game forever.

Website moved to a new server

We moved the website from GoDaddy to DreamHost. That move will help us to serve better our visitors since everything will be faster. Dreamhost is using SSD in all its packages, shared hosting, VPS and deticated servers. We chose VPS for our needs and there is option to either add resources or upgrade (almost) without any downtime. In addition we’ve added a SSL certificate to encrypt the communication between the browser and the server. There are more steps for this one since we are planning to force all traffic to be encrypted and go through https for better security and privacy. Once the upgrade is finished, we will start posting more frequently since we couldn’t post during the upgrade. Lastly, we are planning a new release for Ultra PDF Merger to support bookmarks.

Buy Bitcoin before any hard fork (BTC vs BTU)

Buy Bitcoin before any hard fork (BTC vs BTU)

I would like to tell you the story from my point of view and then decide if buying Bitcoin now it is a good idea. First of all, for Bitcoin to be able to handle the number of transactions other payment systems do needs to change and this is known since the creation of Bitcoin. From time to time some spam the Bitcoin network with transactions and this leads to two things, first to delay the verification of the transactions and second to increase the transaction fees in order for the transactions to be verified faster. The last spam (days ago) was the worst so far and it created the largest backlog of transactions. I had a transaction that took a week to be confirmed. There are some proposals on how Bitcoin can change and handle larger amount of transactions, the most common are SegWit by Bitcoin core and Bitcoin Unlimited mostly backed by miners. SegWit (Segregated Witness) is a soft fork which means it can handle “old style” transactions along with the new ones and Bitcoin continues normally. Bitcoin Unlimited is had fork which means that it is incompatible and will cause problems in the Bitcoin network. If that happens which is what Bitcoin miners want is to have two Bitcoin blockchains and by extension two coins. Exchange sites decided to keep the Bitcoin core as BTC (or XBT) and the new coin (if created) as BTU (or XBU).

Bitcoin: Soon parity with gold

The price of one bitcoin (1135) is very close to the price of one ounce of gold (1165). If Bitcoin continue this trend it will soon reach parity with gold and even surpass it. The price of Bitcoin continue its uptrend while the value of gold decreased in the last months. This shows that the dynamics are changing and people prefer the digital gold instead of the traditional one. While writing the post the price went from 1120 to 1135, I will try to post it before change again and make me re-edit!

Bitcoin’s blockchain has reached 100 GB

This post is not related to the Bitcoin as technology nor the future of its price but the data of Bitcoin. There are several wallets to keep your Bitcoins but the ones that offer the best security is the ones that don’t trust 3rd parties, including the original Bitcoin client. Since they don’t trust any 3rd party they need to download the entire blockchain, every block, every transaction ever made and verify it. That amount of data has reached 100GB so you need a hard drive which can fit that size and have room for future blocks also. The early blocks were empty with few or no transactions but new blocks are full or almost full so expect the size to grow faster from now on. In addition, more users are joining the Bitcoin train, more companies are accepting the crypto-currency and is expected to have even more transactions.

DOOM (2016) – Backup your save games – Save game of fully finished game

DOOM (2016) (a.k.a DOOM 4) is fantastic. The nostalgic factor with the classic levels was very nice, even though finding them was very annoying in some levels. I admit I cheated by watching where they are since I didn’t want to spent hours watching every inch of the level. I prefer to shoot and kill monsters instead! While playing a crash made me loose all the upgrades, I could still see the unlocked levels and use all the guns but all the upgrades were gone. Thankfully I was at level 5 and I didn’t find all the secrets and I would replay them anyway but still, I lost many hours. When I searched about the issue I found out that this specific scenario happened to many players. There are already threads for this so I didn’t post it earlier but I decided to warn the Doom players also.

Zcash is doomed to fail

I am a big fan of cryptocurrencies and especially Bitcoin for what they stand for. Usually new coins try to offer something new or something better to the community. Some are lighter, some use mining algorithms that prevents the use of specialized hardware in order to keep the mining distributed and some offer better anonymity. Most coins are just clones of others in order for the creators to make some fast and easy cash. Some of them are coming with a number of pre-mined coins that the creator usually holds and gives some for marketing purposes or they are announced in a later stage where many of them are already mined. In any case those crypto-coins are giving nothing to the community and the world.

Hackers can gain access to Tesla cars

Security researchers found a way to gain remote access to Tesla cars and execute some actions. Some actions like move the mirrors or open the trunk are not so scary but some other actions like access to the brakes is very scary. Don’t think that those actions require the hacker to be near the car, access to the brakes can be done remotely, kilometers away from the car. Keen security lab researches created a video that demonstrate some actions they can perform on Tesla cars. I hope those security holes to be patched soon.

Bitcoin price will be over $500 soon

Bitcoin price rally is due to the weakening Chinese Yuan. They turn into Bitcoin since it is more stable and because of that demand, Bitcoin price is moving upwards. The demand is estimated to continue and the price to be soon above $500. This happens also with other countries and currencies but it didn’t have this effect in Bitcoin price. As said before, the price will be affected also by the halving that will happen in less than 2 months. The price is estimated to reach $800 by the end of the year.