Bitcoin 16 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $100.98998 breaking into triple digits barely again with an average of $100.44 for the last 24 hours dropping more than $4 from yesterday.  Volume is a 50% less compared to that of yesterday's at 22 892.44.   The market is still on the downward spiral this weekend if the last two weekends are indications.

Blocks    241756
Total BTC    11.294M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    19081217 in 164 blks
Network total    137.558 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    7.39 / 487 s

Bitcoin 15 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $98.4 breaking into double digits again with an average of $104.80 for the last 24 hours.   This is the 3rd week I had absorbed this phenomenon of Bitcoin prices being forced down during the weekend.  Volume is a 25% more compared to that of yesterday's at 39 135.05.   The market is still on the downward spiral this weekend if the last two weekends are indications.

Blocks    241590
Total BTC    11.290M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    19030457 in 330 blks
Network total    155.496 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    8.35 / 431 s

Bitcoin 14 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $103 with an average of $105.20 for the last 24 hours.   Prices dropped about $5 dollars, hopefully the phenomenon of huge drops in the weekend won't start.  Volume is a lot more compared to that of yesterday's at 30 813.86.   The market is still quite volatile.

Blocks    241403
Total BTC    11.285M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    18901441 in 517 blks
Network total    141.576 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    7.60 / 473 s

With the difficulty going up to 18901441 in 517 blocks, I guess it will really discouraged whatever left of GPU miners.   Only ASICs can still have a chance to earn money, that is provided there are reliable sources.

Bitcoin 13 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $108.2 with an average of $109.27 for the last 24 hours.   Prices are more or less settled in three digits again.  Volume is similar to that of yesterday's at 17582.20.   The market is still quite volatile.

Blocks    241215
Total BTC    11.280M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    18617814 in 705 blks
Network total    162.324 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    8.72 / 413 s

Bitcoin 12 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $108.58277 with an average of $106.85499 for the last 24 hours.   Prices are more or less settled in three digits again.  Volume is 20% of yesterday's at 17420.20.   The market is still quite volatile.

Blocks    240989
Total BTC    11.275M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    18259206 in 931 blks
Network total    165.895 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    8.91 / 404 s

Bitcoin 11 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $105.6366 with an average of $105.49 for the last 24 hours.   Prices are increasing about $5 from yesterday's.  Volume is half at 64,746.72.   The market is still extremely volatile.

Blocks    240838
Total BTC    11.271M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    17898580 in 1082 blks
Network total    122.623 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.59 / 547 s

Songs of Love now accepts Bitcoin, do donate for a Charity cause!

Add caption

Bitcoin 10 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $101.43502 with an average of $98.08 for the last 24 hours.   Prices are fluctuating a lot yesterday with a low of $88.  Volume is extremely high at 148,133.04.  This is about eight times that of yesterday, maybe someone is throwing Bitcoins into the market for cash.   Extreme volatility for the last few days.

Blocks    240648
Total BTC    11.266M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    17555266 in 1272 blks
Network total    123.571 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.64 / 542 s

Bitcoin Low at $88

Bitcoin broke $90 earlier with a trough of $88 before climbing back to $91, situation is still very uncertain at the moment.  But from what I see, there are far more buyers than sellers.   I guess the worse is over.  But we need to monitor.  Bitcoin is extremely volatile due to the small size of its economy and relatively few users still.   We need to strengthen our Bitcoin community and encourage more transactions using Bitcoin and also raise the awareness of Bitcoin before the price can stabilize.

Bitcoin Broke $100

Bitcoin broke $100 at the current pricing of $99.26001 on heavy volume 65,655.69.  This is really not a good sign :( .  Analysis of the Buy and Sell order really do not detect any good support lines.

Bitcoin Crash to $100

Goodness I saw it at $109 in the morning and now the price is $100, in the morning there are still pillars of 20 000 coins to support the prices.  Now looking at the graphs the Walls all but disappears.   Instead we are looking at Sell Walls of about 5000 coins each at $120 and $130.  Support levels only at $98.10 with 4000 coins.   Are we looking at a crash?

Bitcoin 9 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $108.39999 with an average of $109.02 for the last 24 hours.   Prices are about $1 off from yesterday.  Volume stands at 18936.28.  This is low volume.   We can see a buy order of about 18000 at $106.18 hopefully this supports the Bitcoin prices.

Blocks    240493
Total BTC    11.262M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    17248209 in 1427 blks
Network total    149.451 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    8.03 / 448 s

Bitcoin 8 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $110.99998 with an average of $112.85 for the last 24 hours.   Prices fall back to nearly $110, a large drop from yesterday.  Volume stands at 74975.00.   This is about 3.5 times that of yesterday, heavy volume with such drop in prices isn't good.

Blocks    240315
Total BTC    11.258M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    16670327 in 1605 blks
Network total    136.609 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    7.34 / 491 s

Bitcoin Price Drop 7 Jun 2013

Bitcoin has been on the downward slope for about two weeks going down from about $130 to $110, I don't see much bad news in fact a lot of positive factors instead.  I guess the drop is due to speculation.   Hopefully everyone hold their breathe, do not panic and sell!

Bitcoin 7 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $119 with an average of $119.60 for the last 24 hours.   Prices fall back below $120 again.  Volume stands at 22 767.66.

Blocks    240163
Total BTC    11.254M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    16389987 in 1757 blks
Network total    134.513 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    7.22 / 498 s

Bitcoin 6 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $121.90959 with an average of $121.46 for the last 24 hours.   This is an increase of about 50 cents from yesterday which is a very tight range.   I hope that Bitcoin is stabilizing after 3 days of up and down.   Volume stands at 16 601.88.

Blocks    239973
Total BTC    11.249M
Difficulty    15605633
Estimated    15823621 in 1947 blks
Network total    126.256 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    7.27 / 495 s

For news, Forbes carried an article about Bitcoin Mixing services.  It is talking about the regulation of Bitcoin.  If the registrations are tight, the issue of Mixing services such that the Bitcoin is transferred over many accounts causing the original account to be untraceable.  These services are also known as Bitcoin laundry services.   Zerocoin which is developed by John Hopkins University is another way of doing it just that it does not require the providers.

Bitcoin 5 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $121.38534 with an average of $121.07 for the last 24 hours.   Bitcoin prices rebound about $3 from yesterday.   Volume stands at 21 807.80. Volume is lower than yesterday.   Hashing rate has increased tremendously to 144 Th/s

Blocks    239792
Total BTC    11.245M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    15433515 in 112 blks
Network total    144.536 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    9.97 / 361 s

Bitcoin 4 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $122.49999 with an average of $118.89 for the last 24 hours.   Bitcoin prices are firming up from yesterday's fall.   Volume stands at 30 559.36.  There is quite a nice rebound from yesterday's steeper than usual fall

Blocks    239556
Total BTC    11.239M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    14917989 in 348 blks
Network total    132.867 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    9.16 / 393 s

Hash rates has increased amazingly to 132.867 Th/s.

Bitcoin 3 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $119.995 with an average of $121.92 for the last 24 hours.   Quite a fall from yesterday.   Volume stands at 102 836.55.   This is quite worrying as the fall comes with quite a heavy volume.   I don't really see any reason for the fall.

Blocks    239383
Total BTC    11.235M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    14479333 in 521 blks
Network total    133.035 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    9.17 / 392 s

Bitcoin 2 Jun 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $129.29982 with an average of $128.42 for the last 24 hours.   A deviation of about $0.5 compared to yesterday.   This is a very tight range.   Volume stands at 6880.95.   This is only about one third of yesterday's

Blocks    239173
Total BTC    11.229M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    14050417 in 731 blks
Network total    140.603 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    9.70 / 371 s

Bitcoin 1 June 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $128.96 with an average of $128.16 for the last 24 hours.   A deviation of about $1 compared to yesterday.   Volume stands at 16 737.25.

Blocks    238960
Total BTC    11.224M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    13330093 in 944 blks
Network total    112.252 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    7.74 / 465 s

The Sydney Morning Herald had an article A virtual currency loved by geeks is fast becoming the currency for crooks.   The article was telling about Cocaine and other drugs that can be easily purchased using Bitcoin anonymously.   It takes about the growing concerns regarding the use of Bitcoin by criminals and money launderers.   It also gave examples of how Bitcoin is used legitimately in Australia to buy anything from meat to books.  But there are still huge concerns over the illegal activities. 

''Criminals have been using Bitcoins for some time because it is not regulated and it's not controlled. There is also a huge jurisdiction issue because it's online.

There was a special mention about the trading of online gaming stuff using virtual currencies and how it is extremely tough to police such activities.   This is where virtual currency is used to purchase online virtual items and then sold to other players for "clean money".   Overall I would say it is a fair article with the pros and cons of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin 31 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $127.70006 with an average of $129.35 for the last 24 hours.   A deviation of about $1 compared to yesterday.   Volume stands at 25 458.87.

Blocks    238787
Total BTC    11.220M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    13100943 in 1117 blks
Network total    117.480 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    8.10 / 444 s

Bitcoin 30 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $131.48 with an average of $130.29 for the last 24 hours.   The range is addition of $2 as compared to yesterday.   This is still quite stable.   Volume stands at 19 759.85 which is slightly less than yesterday's.

Blocks    238593
Total BTC    11.215M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    12771602 in 1311 blks
Network total    105.500 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    7.28 / 495 s

Bitcoin 29 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $129 with an average of $128.02 for the last 24 hours.   It is about less than a dollar difference comparing the 24 hour average which is getting good.   Observing the stability of the Bitcoin with great joy.   This means that it is getting better and better as a trading currency.   Volume stands at 23 552.05 which is less than half that of yesterday's.

Blocks    238431
Total BTC    11.211M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    12535053 in 1473 blks
Network total    101.521 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    7.00 / 514 s

Today's news headlines Bad News for Bitcoin?   I was expecting the worse.   But it turned out that the Fed had shut down Liberty Exchange for a alleged $6 billion money laundering.   I do not think it is fair to even equate Bitcoin with Liberty Exchange.   You can use the USD for money laundering too.  It is the purpose, not the currency at fault!  

Bitcoin 28 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $130.18 with an average of $129.48 for the last 24 hours.   The 24 hour trading is still extremely range bound at less than $3.   Volume stands at 48 081.18 which is double that of yesterday's.

Blocks    238270
Total BTC    11.207M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    12418267 in 1634 blks
Network total    99.979 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.90 / 522 s

Bitcoin 27 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $133.61001 with an average of $134.01 for the last 24 hours.   The 24 hour trading is still extremely range bound.   Volume stands at 23 665.87 which is double that of yesterday's.

Blocks    238099
Total BTC    11.203M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    12175031 in 1805 blks
Network total    98.658 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.80 / 529 s

Bitcoin 26 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $130.98 with an average of $130.90 for the last 24 hours.   It appreciates nearly $1 as compared to yesterday, a very narrow gap.   Volume stands at 17 294.81 which is 1/3 of yesterday's.

Blocks    237941
Total BTC    11.199M
Difficulty    12153412
Estimated    12154051 in 1963 blks
Network total    103.503 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    7.41 / 486 s

The Verge had an article on Why won't Bitcoin die.   As a Bitcoin supporter, I surely find this an extremely good article :)

Bitcoin 25 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $132.50 with an average of $129.93 for the last 24 hours.   It appreciates nearly $5 as compared to yesterday, quite a jump. Hopefully Bitcoin won't fluctuate too much, it will not be good for businesses trying to make use of it. .   Volume stands at 50 400 67 which is more than double that of yesterday's.

Blocks    237783
Total BTC    11.195M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    12073595 in 105 blks
Network total    92.605 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.94 / 519 s

Today's news is a Must Read from Forbes, it is giving Bitcoin Top 10 Sites.   But I certainly hope that more conventional merchant sites will be in Forbes Bitcoin Top 10 next year.   For instance those selling physical goods or house hold items.   Bitcoin really needs to breach those niches.

Bitcoin 24 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $126.67161 with an average of $125.36 for the last 24 hours.   It seems that the Bitcoin prices is slowly but surely edging upwards.  This is still a very stable price for Bitcoin.   Volume stands at 22 617.58.

Blocks    237608
Total BTC    11.190M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    12023831 in 280 blks
Network total    94.920 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    7.11 / 506 s

The super news for Bitcoin Miners!   An article carried by the famous Techcrunch about Cryonic Bitcoin FrostBit.   It is a PC cooled by liquid nitrogen and powered by ASICs!   These are awesome power hunger machine peaking at 2800W a day but able to perform 1000 Gigahashes a second.   If you take a look at the network total of 94.920 Thash/s, you will find that one machine itself can contribute more than 1% of the total hash power!   Of course these features filled and nitrogen cooled machine isn't on the cheap either, it costs US$15000!   It is expected to be delivered in Jul 2013 and can be preordered here.

Bitcoin 23 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $124.49999 with an average of $123.05 for the last 24 hours.   The trading is about a dollar more than yesterday's.  This is still a very stable price for Bitcoin.   Volume stands at 19 074.31.

Blocks    237430
Total BTC    11.186M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    11894025 in 458 blks
Network total    85.458 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.40 / 562 s

Wow!  Even IEEE Spectrum is writing an article on Bitcoin.   The essence that Internet Archive Federal Credit Union can help setup exchanges for Bitcoin which conform to regulatory requirements so as to bring Bitcoin into the mainstream.

Bitcoin 22 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $122.80 with an average of $122.29 for the last 24 hours.   The trading is range bounded within a very tight interval.  Volume stands at 13 398.84.

Blocks    237271
Total BTC    11.182M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    11817098 in 617 blks
Network total    87.540 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.56 / 549 s

Bitcoin 21 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $122.03002 with an average of $122.31 for the last 24 hours.   The trading range is tight indicating a stable price level.  Volume stands at 17 359.33.

Blocks    237120
Total BTC    11.178M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    11836231 in 768 blks
Network total    70.114 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    5.25 / 685 s

One of the Headline news in Yahoo Finance isn't very great.   After Government Raid, Jittery Future for Bitcoin.   It was saying that after the seizure of assets of Bitcoin largest exchange, we are getting nervous.  Are we?  I think most of us took it quite well as this is not the first time Bitcoin is subjected to such treatment.   The Bitcoin prices did not indicate any nervousness of the markets at all.   In fact, it has been extraordinary stable.   I think this is a good quote in the article ""It is a little bit of a hysterical reaction from the U.S. authorities," Jon Rushman, former managing director at BlackRock and a professor at the University of Warwick in the U.K. said in a statement".

Bitcoin 20 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $122.80 with an average of $121.87 for the last 24 hours.   Bitcoin has been staying in a very tight range recently which is good for its implementation.  Volume stands at 20 603.36.  

Blocks    236991
Total BTC    11.175M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    11973277 in 897 blks
Network total    82.285 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.17 / 584 s

Bitcoin in the news with an Interview in PC World with a Bitcoin Developer.   He talks about the various aspects of Bitcoin including the elusive founder Satoshi Nakamoto.   He concluded that to ease the worries for the governments, Bitcoin exchanges should be regulated.   Problem of regulating, I feel will destroy the anonymous nature of Bitcoin.   We next have news on the The Winklevoss Brothers going into Bitcoin in CNN Money.   Wow!  We really have all the major news sites talking about us finally.   There is also an interesting piece in Quartz guessing that Bitcoin's creator is Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki.   Frankly speaking I feel that the author is extremely far fetched in the guessing.   Everything seems to be a guess without a shred of real solid proof.   By his criteria, I think everyone can be a Satoshi Nakamoto.   Come on give us proof.   There is enough speculations already about the identity but we need real hard evidence.

Crackdown on Bitcoin

This is a new video uploaded to Youtube, talking about the crackdown on Bitcoin systems and suspected that this is due to the pressures from the banking industry.

Bitcoins 19 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $123.46841 with an average of $123.81 for the last 24 hours.   This is a narrow range I must say about a deviation of $2 which is stable and good.  Volume stands at 23 091.56. 

Blocks    236839
Total BTC    11.171M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    11950572 in 1049 blks
Network total    92.094 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.90 / 522 s

This is great exposure and great news from Aljazeera, one of the huge news network that had gain prominence in recent years.   It is saying that Bitcoins' supports promise that Bitcoins can be used in Smartphones and some workers can even be paid their wages through Bitcoins which will certainly revolutionized the banking industry.   You can see the video from Alijazeera here.

Living on Bitcoins for a Week

This is a very cool news article on living on Bitcoins for a Week.  Strongly recommended.  What's more it was carried by the Forbes!   Certainly an influential and fun article.  Enjoy your weekends, Fellow Bitcoiners!

Bitcoin News Video 18 May 2013

Bitcoin is getting so popular that basically we have the mainstream media stalking us online and now on Youtube, you can see a lot of news coming from respectable traditional news media.

From English News Today

From Fox News

We are really getting there.   Some Bitcoin inquiries will be all over the place and I guess we can finally use our Bitcoins at say MacDonalds or 7-11 or Subway?   I really hope such a day will come, not too long from now.

Seizure of a Bitcoin Exchange Account

This was the news I mentioned earlier about Mtgox account being seized.   Hope that they can solve it fast and good!  Mtgox is basically the bedrock of our Bitcoin exchange systems.

An update is here:

Bitcoin 18 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $123.50 with an average of $121.44 for the last 24 hours.   This is a narrow range I must say about a deviation of $2 which is stable and good.  Volume stands at 79 463.33.  

Blocks    236635
Total BTC    11.166M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    12018011 in 1253 blks
Network total    82.882 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.21 / 580 s

Bitcoin news coming from the Los Angeles Times!  Business Section about Bitcoin concept is gaining currency!    This is a great post alright!   It is telling us that Bitcoin came as a rebel but is gaining popularity with Silicon Valley with about 1000 representatives this weekend discussing about Bitcoins!   I love this quote "I think we're starting to see Bitcoin moving out of the shadows of the Internet into something that becomes more mainstream," said Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. "We're starting to solve real problems for real people. And that's exciting."   We are getting there Brothers, we are going Main Stream!   Just look at the number of Venture Capitalists mentioned in this article.  It seems that they are all over us wanting to throw money at us to bring Bitcoins into mainstream!   My main worry is the last part which mentions about government intervention.   Hope they won't caused too much a problem for us by introducing some ridiculous laws.

Bitcoin 17 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $117.14999 with an average of $114.95 for the last 24 hours.   This is a good $4 more than 16 May 2013.  But is still a gradual move.  Volume is at 43 004.93.   

Blocks    236520
Total BTC    11.163M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    11836491 in 1368 blks
Network total    80.929 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.06 / 594 s

Not quite a good news today with US Officials Freezing an account related to a Bitcoin Exchange.   Well they are alleging that Mt Gox is conducting "unlicensed money service business".   The USA Treasury Department wants Bitcoin exchanges to be "subject to the same money-laundering rules as traditional providers".

Mt. Gox couldn't be reached for comment. A statement on its website said the company had "read on the Internet" about the warrant.

 Hope that Bitcoin providers especially such a major player the likes of Mt. Gox will be able to settle such issues and push forward to make Bitcoin a main Internet currency of the world.

Coingig.com CEO Comment

"Coingig is working 24/7 to bring the bitcoin world all the products they can buy with fiat available for bitcoin. We want to become the Amazon of Bitcoin!"

We certainly wish them the best and more.  Just to repeat, the url for Coingig - The Bitcoin Marketplace.   Do visit them as first choice if you need anything.  Support Bitcoin's usage!

Coingig.com - The Bitcoin Marketplace

Firstly we are not advertising for anyone for monetary gains.   But we are highlighting the brave new sites that build upon the foundations of Bitcoins.   Technically we have a great and stable wallet now.   There are also more and more transaction tools to help with the buying and selling using Bitcoins.   Our weakest links are to persuade enough merchants to adopt Bitcoins.   Coingig - The Bitcoin Marketplace is one of the early adopters.   Going through their web site, I am glad to see the ease of navigation and payment.   352 products at the last visit.   Certainly hope that they will grow fast and expand with more and more products allowing us to use our Bitcoins easily.

Come on, Bitcoin comrades, give our support to those stores who accept Bitcoins and give them first priority!

Bitcoin 16 May 2013

The current Bitcoin price is $114 with an average of $110.89 for the last 24 hours.   This is a good narrow range which really says something about the stability of our Bitcoins.  

Blocks    236353
Total BTC    11.159M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    11721521 in 1535 blks
Network total    77.658 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    5.82 / 619 s

Bitcoin News - The coming political battle over Bitcoin which is quite heartening as it claims that Bitcoin had the attention of the mainstream media.   However further reading is disappointing, as it talked about Bitcoin being misused by criminal elements, as if the USD or any other currency hasn't.  Next on CNN Money, "I would be very surprised if Bitcoin is still around in 10 years," said Bremmer, the founder and CEO of Eurasia Group, the world's largest risk consulting firm.  A doomsday prediction for Bitcoin.   Definitely hope that he is wrong and absolutely wrong.

Bitcoin Gets Venture Funding

Silicon Valley-based accelerator Boost VC is investing up to $350 000 on Bitcoin startups.   This is certainly great news for us Bitcoin promoters.   “We are especially interested in startups that make it easier to actually spend Bitcoin currency,” Boost VC Founder Alan Draper says.   This will be exactly what Bitcoin needs!  More consumers to adopt Bitcoins rather than we Geeks mining and playing around with it as a virtual currency.   Now a respectable VC is putting in real money into our virtual currency to make it adoptable in the real world! 

Bitcoin Wallet

The latest Bitcoin Wallet is version 0.8.1.   It is a maintenance release and not a critical release.  This is a maintenance release that adds a new network rule to avoid a chain-forking incompatibility with versions 0.7.2 and earlier.   This was added in 18 Mar 2013.   Since Bitcoin version 0.5.0 released 21 November 2011 I have not seen any major security bug fixes which goes to show that Bitcoin itself is heading towards stability.   This is a very good show and a confidence booster for those who wants to adopt Bitcoin for their businesses.

Bitcoin Markets 15 May 2013

After the recent upheavals which had seen the Bitcoin breaching $200 and going below $50.  We are now looking at more moderate range for the bitcoin.   The last 30 days still reflect the upheaval quite badly.   The range 50.01 — 166.43438.   But as we can see the latest price now is $106 average of $112.84.  Volume of 119 239.71.   

Blocks    236239
Total BTC    11.156M
Difficulty    11187257
Estimated    11722007 in 1649 blks
Network total    80.575 Thash/s
Blocks/hour    6.04 / 596 s

One important characteristics of currency is stability and usability.  Hoping to see stability, with stability, more vendors will more likely adopt the currency.   The fluctuations is at low of 103.01847 and high of 119.80002 for the last 24 hours.  We are using mtgoxUSD data which is the most popular Bitcoin exchange.

Bitcoin Price

Bitcoin difficulty is now at an astronomical 11187257, it is basically useless to use GPU to mine it anymore even though the prices had gone up about 20 fold to $120.   Those who are still mining are using ASICs more or less.  One of the popular ones being from Butterfly Labs.   I remembered when Butterfly Labs first made their claims on the Bitcoin Forums, they were created with skepticism.   No one really believe that they can achieved.   They did miss some figures but overall, they are doing extremely well. 

Bitcoin Update 0.7.2

Bitcoin version 0.7.2 is now available from:
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.7.2

This is a bug-fix minor release.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github:
  https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues

How to Upgrade
--------------

If you are running an older version, shut it down. Wait
until it has completely shut down (which might take a few minutes for older
versions), then run the installer (on Windows) or just copy over
/Applications/Bitcoin-Qt (on Mac) or bitcoind/bitcoin-qt (on Linux).

If you were running on Linux with a version that might have been compiled
with a different version of Berkeley DB (for example, if you were using an
Ubuntu PPA version), then run the old version again with the -detachdb
argument and shut it down; if you do not, then the new version will not
be able to read the database files and will exit with an error.

Explanation of -detachdb (and the new "stop true" RPC command):
The Berkeley DB database library stores data in both ".dat" and
"log" files, so the database is always in a consistent state,
even in case of power failure or other sudden shutdown. The
format of the ".dat" files is portable between different
versions of Berkeley DB, but the "log" files are not-- even minor
version differences may have incompatible "log" files. The
-detachdb option moves any pending changes from the "log" files
to the "blkindex.dat" file for maximum compatibility, but makes
shutdown much slower. Note that the "wallet.dat" file is always
detached, and versions prior to 0.6.0 detached all databases
at shutdown.

Bug fixes
---------

* Prevent RPC 'move' from deadlocking. This was caused by trying to lock the
  database twice.

* Fix use-after-free problems in initialization and shutdown, the latter of
  which caused Bitcoin-Qt to crash on Windows when exiting.

* Correct library linking so building on Windows natively works.

* Avoid a race condition and out-of-bounds read in block creation/mining code.

* Improve platform compatibility quirks, including fix for 100% CPU utilization
  on FreeBSD 9.

* A few minor corrections to error handling, and updated translations.

* OSX 10.5 supported again

----------------------------------------------------
Thanks to everybody who contributed to this release:

Alex
dansmith
Gavin Andresen
Gregory Maxwell
Jeff Garzik
Luke Dashjr
Philip Kaufmann
Pieter Wuille
Wladimir J. van der Laan
grimd34th

Bitcoin accepted by Wordpress.com

As we all know Bitcoin is a revolutionary currency that has gain increasing acceptance in more in the tech fields and within the geeks communities.   It was hard work having businesses all over the world, especially Brick and Mortar Businesses to recognize Bitcoin.   Bitcoin has come a long way.   Initially it was only mined by those with extra CPU power.   This has evolved into GPU Bitcoin Mining Rigs, with owners willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to build the rigs and also thousands of dollars to run the rigs as well as to cool them down.   With the development of FPGA we can see more and more Bitcoin Mining rigs that are specially built for Bitcoin Mining.  The cost of such specialized hardware is definitely more than GPU, though operations will be cheaper as less electricity is needed.  The trend shows that adopters strongly believe that the Bitcoin is here to stay.

One extremely encouraging development is that of Wordpress.com accepting Bitcoins for upgrading of the blog purposes.   The fact that Wordpress.com, one of the largest blog sites as well as the developer of Wordpress decides to accept Bitcoin is really a great stimulus to the Bitcoin Community.   At present we are seeing tremendous interest in Bitcoins with mining network of 22.183 Thash/s.   Bitcoin has been developing from strength to strength, it is hoped that in the not too long future, Brick and Mortar shops can accept Bitcoin as they had done with credit cards.   I guess the day won't be too far off.