Bitcoin plunges after major platform indefinitely halts withdrawals

The price of the digital currency bitcoin slid to its lowest level in nearly two months on Monday after bitcoin digital marketplace Mt. Gox said a halt on withdrawals it announced on Friday would continue indefinitely after it detected “unusual activity.”

http://www.reuters.com

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    The website of Mt. Gox appears to be taken down, shortly after six major Bitcoin exchanges released a joint statement distancing themselves from the troubled Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange. Mt. Gox's homepage was not loading, although no error message appeared. Mt. Gox was not immediately available for comment. "This tragic violation…
    Tags: bitcoin, mt, gox, currency, digital
  • 86
    With the price of bitcoin seemingly on the up and up, there’s no shortage of conversation on the topic of where the price goes from here. There’s seemingly no shortage of optimism, either, with the value of bitcoin up a whopping 18 percent in the past week. Hedge fund Laureate BVI is…
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    Bitcoin prices are all out of whack. Mtgox cratering. pic.twitter.com/exe8Bwl6cG
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    Mark Karpeles, chief executive of Mt. Gox, the embattled Toyko-based bitcoin exchange, resigned on Sunday from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, in the latest blow to the digital currency. Jinyoung Lee Englund, a spokesperson for the Bitcoin Foundation - a trade group promoting the adoption of the digital currency,…
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When Will the Fed End Its Zero Rate Policy?

U.S. Treasury yields and other interest rates increased in the months leading up to the Federal Reserve’s December 2013 decision to cut back its large-scale bond purchases. This increase in rates probably at least partly reflected changes in what bond investors expected regarding future monetary policy. Recent research on this episode tentatively suggests that investors moved earlier the date when they believed the Fed would exit its zero interest rate policy, even though Fed policymakers made few changes in their projections of appropriate monetary policy.

http://www.frbsf.org/

 

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Bitcoin bug causes massive sell-off

A bug in the bitcoin software that makes it possible to alter transaction details over the network has caused panic-selling among holders of the crypto-currency, sending prices crashing below the $600 mark on Monday morning.

http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=25707

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  • 82
    The website of Mt. Gox appears to be taken down, shortly after six major Bitcoin exchanges released a joint statement distancing themselves from the troubled Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange. Mt. Gox's homepage was not loading, although no error message appeared. Mt. Gox was not immediately available for comment. "This tragic violation…
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    With the price of bitcoin seemingly on the up and up, there’s no shortage of conversation on the topic of where the price goes from here. There’s seemingly no shortage of optimism, either, with the value of bitcoin up a whopping 18 percent in the past week. Hedge fund Laureate BVI is…
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  • 81
    The price of the digital currency bitcoin slid to its lowest level in nearly two months on Monday after bitcoin digital marketplace Mt. Gox said a halt on withdrawals it announced on Friday would continue indefinitely after it detected "unusual activity." http://www.reuters.com
    Tags: bitcoin, monday

How to hedge yourself against shakes from Asia’s biggest economy China

The global financial crisis did not start in 2008 but in 2007 when BNP Paribas and UBS AG suspended withdrawals from some of their funds.

If the world is once again buffeted by a similar crisis thanks to the enormous splurge in Chinese lending and fears about the quality of lending in the giant shadow banking industry, then historians will look back at January 2014 when a fund promoted by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ( ICBC) came close to default.

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/30131463.cms

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Turkey Struggles to Protect Its Lira

The plunge of the lira has already exposed the Turkish economy’s dependence on short-term foreign investment. Most foreign capital is invested in Turkish stocks and bonds rather than longer-term projects.

All it takes is a phone call or a few clicks of a mouse for short-term investors to move their money elsewhere, and that is what foreign investors have been doing, not only in pulling money out of Turkey but from countries like Russia, Argentina and South Africa, whose currencies have also fallen as a result.

http://www.nytimes.com/

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High-Speed Trading Isn’t About Efficiency—It’s About Cheating

When hedge funds use bots to buy and sell stocks within milliseconds, they’re not improving the market. They’re rigging the market.

 

High-frequency trading (HFT) hedge funds. These funds use computer algorithms—a.k.a.: algobots—to buy and sell stocks at incredible speeds. We’re talking milliseconds. The idea is to react to any market news or inefficiencies before actual humans can process them.

http://www.theatlantic.com/

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We all turn to data. Adios SMS and Calls

In a taxi, workshops, banking halls, under tree shades, name it – you cannot miss seeing someone on Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Kik or Whatsapp, thanks to the increasing popularity of internet-enabled phones and smartphones.

Evidence can be found in the news of the planet.

Informa Telecoms & Media has predicted that global annual SMS revenues will fall by US$23bn by 2018, to US$96.7bn, down from US$120 billion in 2013.

Belgian operator Proximus recorded a drop in SMS traffic over the New Year holiday. Traffic was down 9 percent froAccording to initial figures from

Spanish operator Yoigo reported that 8 percent more customers used mobile data services over the New Year’s holiday, and data used per customer rose 170 percent from a year earlier.

 

France’s mobile operators, the new year brought further evidence that SMS usage in the country is being increasingly cannibalised by alternative services such as MMS or picture messages and over-the-top messaging apps.

If you think that telecom provider will rise the cost to compensate then you probably miss that in Europe there will be no more roaming cost soon.

“From July 2014 you would no longer be charged extra when you receive a call on your mobile phone while travelling in another EU country. Companies would need to offer “roam like at home” packages that apply across the bloc, or allow you to use a separate roaming provider without changing your original SIM card.”

Telecoms are not simply sitting back to watch their revenues from voice calls and SMS shrink. They have shifted goalposts towards data, with solid competition for the internet subscribers expected.

Ready for this trend ?

So how will telecom companies react to this ?

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