Bitcoin futures contracts allow traders to take advantage of the price movement of Bitcoin without necessarily having to own and hold the exact amount of it. They are a derivative product that gained serious popularity in the past years.
Traders often use Bitcoin futures open interest as an indicator to confirm trends and trend reversals for both the futures. Open interest is calculated by summing up all the opened positions, regardless of whether they are long or short, and subtracting those that have been closed.
The following chart exemplifies how open interest (OI) changes as a result of user activity.
Open interest indicates the capital flowing in and out of the market. The more capital flows into the Bitcoin futures market, the open interest will be higher. Vice versa, the open interest will decline.
Bullish
An increasing open interest in a rising market
Price and open interest increasing during the uptrend means new money coming into the market, and new buying power is taking the control.
A decreasing open interest in a declining market
Price and open interest decreasing during the downtrend indicates that long position holders are being forced to liquidate their positions. And the downtrend will end once all the sellers have sold their positions.
Bearish
An increasing open interest in a falling market
It means all bulls who bought near the top of the market are now in a loss position. Their panic to sell keeps the price action under pressure.
A decreasing open interest in a rising market
If prices are in a downtrend and open interest is on the rise, this pattern shows aggressive new short selling, which will lead to a continuation of a downtrend and a bearish condition.
Data from the widespread monitoring resource Skew tracks the open interest for Bitcoin futures since the beginning of the year. Below is a chart that reveals how it relates to the price.
As seen in the picture, Bitcoin’s price tends to correlate to its open interest on the way down and when it’s increasing. The drop in both is particularly evident on March 12th – 13th when Bitcoin lost almost 40% of its value.
To conclude it, along with price and volume, open interest can determine the current market sentiment and signal a coming market trend. Take good use of it, you can easily make trading decisions and profit from the market fluctuations.
Bexplus is a bitcoin-based exchange that offers you the opportunity to get profits by speculating on the price rising and falling. In Bexplus, you can trade perpetual contracts of Bitcoin, ETH, LTC, EOS and XRP with 100x leverage. Join Bexplus, No KYC is required and you can enjoy 100% deposit bonus.
What are Bitcoin futures and what are some examples that show how they work? In this video, I explain Bitcoin futures in a beginner-friendly way and also provide examples of how futures work in other real world markets. I also explain going short vs. long on a futures contract, how futures prices track spot prices, how they are used to hedge against price fluctuations, how they are daily settled and leveraged, and how Bitcoin miners and speculators can use this financial instrument in the Bitcoin/crypto world (since the introduction on CME and CBOE regulated exchanges).
The much-anticipated bitcoin halving is upon us, an event that sees the BTC reward that miners receive for processing transactions on the bitcoin network divvy up for the third time in history. In theory, the value of the most prominent cryptocurrency should rise following the halving event since it means that new units would be harder to produce. That narrative has received support from the bull runs pre and post the first two halving events — 2012 and 2016.
Within a year after the first halving, bitcoin rose over 90X from the $10 region to a peak of about $1,180. For the second halving, bitcoin went as high as $2,800 from around $600 within a year before peaking at nearly $20,000 in Dec. 2017.
However, the crypto market has notably matured compared to 2012 and 2016. For one, bitcoin derivatives including futures and options are relatively more predominant these days, allowing for a more advanced price discovery among market participants. By implication, the narrative of a rally driven by the supply-squeeze might not play out so simply, at least not in the short term.
Riot Blockchain Gets A Small Boost In EPS With Newly Reported Financial Results
Paul Tudor Jones On CNBC: “The Digitization Of The World Benefits Bitcoin”
Bitcoin Price Surges To $9,000 With Supply Halving Hours Away
“It is a very different world in 2020 than it was during the last two halvings, the derivatives market is much larger and more important,” said Garrick Hileman, head of research at Blockchain.com
“One way I would say the market has changed is that historically the trading market was more lopsided toward upward transactions because there were not as many ways to speculate on the price going down, for example, the ability to borrow and sell short,” he added. “That’s something that now exists through futures and options. So all these products have created a more level playing field for people who want to bet on the price going down”
An example of how a more robust price discovery system can overpower the demand and supply narrative is the alleged role that the introduction of CBOE and CME bitcoin futures played in the sell-off from bitcoin’s high of nearly $20,000 in 2017. Although it’s yet to be proven, some believe that the introduction of CBOE and CME futures afforded cash-flush institutional traders an opportunity to bet against BTC, influencing spot market behavior in the process.
Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, CEO of IOV Labs, the company behind bitcoin smart contract platform RSK, argues that the possibility of this dynamic playing out makes this halving event different from the first two.
“While the reduction in bitcoin’s renewed supply due to the halving introduces the possibility of a sharp rise in BTC price,” he said “it is possible that smart institutional money will push prices down in the short-term, as it did when CME and CBOE introduced their futures in Dec. 2017.”
BTC currently has a bearish market sentiment despite halving
In the meantime, certain bitcoin market data shows that traders have a bearish sentiment around the halving event. Hileman pointed at the high demand for put options.
“When you dig into the options data, it looks like the market is placing a premium on contracts that are below the current prices,” he said. “The options market seems to be suggesting that there is more concern over prices moving downwards.”
The Bitcoin BTC put-call ratio data from crypto analytics firm Skew echoes to this sentiment. As indicated in the chart below, the ratio has been trending north. A rising put-call ratio suggests that there is a mounting demand for put contracts.
Despite bitcoin halving, the bitcoin options market shows a bearish sentiment.
Skew.com
Emmanuel Goh, the CEO and co-founder of Skew, which recently raised $5 million and launched a trading product, explains that bitcoin options skew, another metric that tracks the price of put options relative to their call counterparts, is also worth monitoring.
With regard to the halving period, “if the options skew is positive for a sustained period of time, it indicates more concerns in the marketplace on the mining being potentially negative for mining companies and potentially having a negative impact on the price of bitcoin,” said Goh.
The BTC skew metric provided by Goh’s firm shows a positive trend.
And there may be some real-world proof that miners aren’t particularly optimistic in the short-term post-halving.
Meltem Demirors, the chief strategy officer at CoinShares, in a Zoom call, referenced her firm’s observations of miners’ activities.
“I think miners are looking to opportunistically offload some of their bitcoin inventory to add operating capital to their balance sheet,” Demirors said. “We’ve been talking to a number of miners on CoinShares’ capital broker-dealer side who are looking at raising capital to build out new facilities, to buy new machines and to extend their capacity.
“And we’ve seen a lot of miners engaging with our capital market trading desk looking for ways to manage and hedge their risk and lock in sort of an OPEX and develop a risk hedge portfolio strategy for the bitcoin they have on their balance sheet so that they can meet their operating cost and reduce some of the inevitable volatility that is going to come to miners around this event.”
SFOX, a Y Combinator-backed digital assets trading platform that provides a single point of market access to institutional participants, have seen similar trends. Some miners are despondent on holding crypto in order to cover their overhead costs, the startup’s head of growth Daniel Kim said.
For context as to why miners might be more cautious, consider that the bitcoin halving event would typically raise the breakeven price for miners.
John Todaro, the head of research at institutional trading tools provider Tradeblock, said mining breakeven price for bitcoin will rise nearly 100% post-2020 halving, citing internal research.
“We have current mining breakeven price between $5,000 and $6,000 per BTC, but immediately after the halving, assuming hashrate stays where it is today or even rises a little bit, you’re going to see the average mining breakeven jump to about $10,000 to $13,000 per BTC,” Todaro said. “You need to see the market price of bitcoin get above those levels or miners are going to be unprofitable, which could see a decline in hashrate, as miners exit the space.”
The changes coming to mining operations could spur some bearish narrative in the short-term based on the mining death spiral story. Therefore, this could potentially be the first time in the network that the market price of bitcoin would stay below mining breakeven points for a considerable amount of time, Todaro added.
BTC also remains correlated to stocks
There’s been wide media coverage on how the price of bitcoin is tied closely to equities. Demirors, Kim and Todaro all believe bitcoin is indeed tracking stocks right now and that it is probably a bigger driving force than the halving event in the short term.
Kim’s firm, SFOX, recently published a report, saying that BTC has sustained a “notably positive” correlation of 0.40 with the S&P 500 — despite the increased focus on the block reward halving event.
The long-term outlook for bitcoin post-halving remain positive
Given the somewhat docile market reaction to the halving event at present, it raises the question of if the event has been priced in. The answer depends on who you ask. That said, most of the experts interviewed believe that the market hasn’t fully priced the halving event, with expectations of higher BTC prices over the long term.
Based on a positive outlook for the three D’s of depletion (halving-driven supply cut), demand and dollars, CoinShares believe that the market price for BTC will be “materially higher” than present levels in 12 to 18 month, Demirors added, cautioning that the timing of a sustained bullish run will depend on soon the bitcoin decouples from the macro narrative.
On the qualitative aspect of things, RSK’s Zaldivar believes that the strength of the bitcoin network is underappreciated and expects that more people will realize this with time.
“Bitcoin is fundamentally strong with an unmatched security thanks to its computing power, financial incentives and network effect, and it is the most reliable and scarce digital asset in the world,” Zaldivar added. “With the economic uncertainty we are witnessing today, it would be no surprise to see the bitcoin ecosystem grow to attract institutional investors who perceive it as a store of value and a hedge.”
With regard to demand, U.S. based digital asset manager Grayscale Investments reported in the first quarter that it saw a record of over $500 million in new investments from its clients. Michael Sonnenshein, the firm’s managing director said during a call that his firm is finding that more people are looking to diversify their portfolio to tap into the potentials of blockchain.
“We are seeing that more investors are eager to either have some exposure for the first time or increase their exposure to bitcoin in a world that is characterized by quite a bit of economic uncertainty,” said Sonnenshein. “I think there is a large group of investors that are excited by the long-term potential of the applications being built around bitcoin weather it’s payments or leveraging the bitcoin blockchain for cost savings.”
I am a financial, cryptocurrency and blockchain writer. I have nearly a decade of experience covering the financial markets and about three years of experience demystifying the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain. My work has appeared on leading online financial publications including Investopedia, TheStreet, Motley Fool and Cointelegraph just to name a few. I previously worked with trade bodies to help industry executives save time by curating the stories they should care about in daily newsletters. Disclosure: I occasionally hold and trade Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The Bitcoin Halving 2020 is happening in 2 days! The Bitcoin halving event happens essentially once every 4 years, so this is a topic that needs to be discussed and analyzed. Whether you believe Bitcoin is worth owning, I definitely think that it should be at least a small part of your over portfolio as a speculative asset. In this video we are going to break down the following to give you a better understanding of the 2020 Bitcoin Halving along with some price predictions. 1. Bitcoin Blockchain 2. Bitcoin Mining 3. Bitcoin Supply 4. What is Halving? 5. Why does it occur? 6. Bitcoin Price Predictions post-halving The reason the Bitcoin halving is such a popular topic is because the number of Bitcoin that miners are rewarded with are essentially getting cut by 50%. So instead of earning 12.5BTC per block, they will be earning 6.25BTC. This is essentially designed to prevent inflation. This is a huge event and could lead to an enormous increase in the price of Bitcoin…AFTER a price decline. If you would like to buy and get $10 worth of Bitcoin for FREE, sign up for Coinbase HERE: http://bit.ly/CoinbaseWBF M1 FINANCE – INVEST FOR FREE! (Yes, Really) 😎 https://m1finance.8bxp97.net/D61Zq ————– My FREE M1 Finance Training Video! 🤑 http://bit.ly/FreeM1Training ————– SCHEDULE A COACHING CALL WITH ME! 🤝 https://bit.ly/MarkoCoaching ————– THE BEST CREDIT CARDS TO USE RIGHT NOW! 📚 https://bit.ly/creditcardsWBF ————– CIT BANK – SUPER HIGH YIELD SAVINGS ACCOUNT 😮 https://bit.ly/citbanksavings ————– GET MY FREE INVESTING GUIDE HERE: 😎 https://bit.ly/FreeInvestingGuideWBF ————– FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM 📷 https://www.instagram.com/whiteboardf… ————– Instrumental Produced By Chuki: http://www.youtube.com/user/CHUKImusic ABOUT ME 👇 My mission is to provide my viewers with actionable content that enables them to create financial wealth. My videos are a reflection of my real-world experience as a real estate investor, stock market investor, student of finance, and entrepreneur. This channel allows me to share my passion for personal finance, stock market investing, real estate investing, and entrepreneurship. I produce content that I would want to watch, and because of that, I give 100% effort in every video that I make. I also believe in complete transparency and open communication with my audience. Subscribe if you are interested in: #Investing#PersonalFinance#Entrepreneurship#StockMarket DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial adviser. These videos are for educational purposes only. Investing of any kind involves risk. While it is possible to minimize risk, your investments are solely your responsibility. It is imperative that you conduct your own research. I am merely sharing my opinion with no guarantee of gains or losses on investments. AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE: Some of the links on this channel are affiliate links, meaning, at NO additional cost to you, I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase and/or subscribe. However, this does not impact my opinion.
Most people know little about Bitcoin. It’s a brand, like the internet was in the late 1990s that created great excitement in a small fanatical audience but confusion, indifference and often hostility in the mainstream and establishment.
“I don’t need email,” people said, while many would look blank and not know what it was. It wasn’t until the social media floodgates opened that the mainstream piled in. Now all the marvelous benefits and distractions of being connected are taken as read.
The benefits of crypto are not well understood or even considered beyond the possibility of a life change rising in value for coins that an investor might ride to riches. This may well be the future for Bitcoin so to start a list of reasons why you should hold some Bitcoin must start with:
1) A lottery ticket to a ride that some see having a 1,000% upside.
It could happen. There are only going to be 21 million bitcoins (BTC), many of which like Roman gold coins are already lost forever. If bitcoin was to be worth just half of the gold in the world it would be about $200,000 a coin. If all the BTC was worth $1 trillion then the price would be north of $50,000.
With BTC currently at $7,400 and the ability for people to buy tiny amounts, there is a fun dividend in actually holding.
2) Blockchain is “the next big thing.”
If you want to catch that wave when it lands, you need to know a bit about it. Buying crazes on the basis of zero knowledge is the short cut to the poorhouse. Owning bitcoin and going through all the stages to “get” crypto will position you perfectly for the day “crypto IPO” hits. That day will come and it will be big. Owning bitcoin will position you to take advantage of that boom.
3) Portfolio diversification is crucial.
Everyone should have a little gold, for example, to buffer the roller coaster of other financial instruments. Bitcoin and gold are very similar in as much as they are havens. “Physical” bitcoin however is easier to store, faster to sell and has much greater upside if you are laying in assets for what you see as being extremely volatile times in the future. If you are not in the “bullets and corn beef” legion, the gold, silver and bitcoin are must haves, with bitcoin the king if you feel you might have to jump on a plane to safety. It’s easy to travel with bitcoin; with gold bars and sacks of silver, not so much.
4) Bitcoin is currently a great hedge especially for equities.
This is because for now at least, bad news for equities is good news for bitcoin. That bad news is currently the China trade war. The trade war is bad for equities and there is a clear link to moves in BTC and emergent good/bad news on the trade negotiations. Bitcoin sends the signal then the news appears, which one would imagine is because of the insider news flow in crypto-hungry China.
5) Bitcoin is useful money.
You can buy things with bitcoin, and with bitcoin debit cards you can use it to buy things anywhere that takes Visa/Mastercard. While this can prove expensive, a bitcoin debit card is another off ramp for holders wishing to spend their profits. Bitcoin is also a useful currency for B2B and while currently niche, bitcoin use for international payments is quickly expanding when products need to be bought quickly and the vendor needs to establish transfer of funds fast to cut out delays. For large sums bitcoin beats credit cards hands down as a bitcoin transaction can’t be reversed unlike a credit card payment that is always vulnerable to charge backs. Transfers can take days to materialize, so for anything that’s a “rush job” bitcoin is the best possible way to pay if the vendor takes BTC.
Every investor should buy some bitcoin, even if it’s just $1. It is always best to be too early to a financial phenomenon than too late and it turns out the bitcoin story is still in its early chapters.
The Bitcoin story is still unfolding.
Credit: ADVFN
If you are an investor, it was obvious you need to hold equities, bonds, gold and cash. That is still true but these days, you need to hold a little crypto, because it is a new positive sum financial instrument. If you don’t have Bitcoin, the world won’t end, but you will be less diversified and more at risk than an investor that does hold some. Bitcoin will continue to be the ‘kingpin’ of the emergent blockchain industry and everybody needs a little bit of exposure to that in the same way as they needed a little Amazon in 2002.
I am the CEO of stocks and investment website ADVFN . As well as running Europe and South America’s leading financial market website I am a prolific financial writer. I wrote a stock column for WIRED – which described me as a ‘Market Maven’ – and am a regular columnist for numerous financial publications around the world. I have written for titles including: Working Money, Active Trader, SFO and Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities in the US and have written for pretty much every UK national newspaper. In the last few years I have become a financial thriller writer and have just had my first non-fiction title published: 101 ways to pick stock market winners. Find me here on US Amazon. You’ll also see me regularly on CNBC, CNN, SKY, Business News Network and the BBC giving my take on the markets.
Now, it’s been revealed federal prosecutor-turned bitcoin and cryptocurrency expert Katie Haun was asked to look into “shutting down” bitcoin by her boss at the U.S. attorney’s office in 2012.
“They said ‘we have this perfect assignment for you’–there’s this thing called bitcoin and we need to investigate it,” Haun told CNBC in a wide-ranging interview, adding a colleague asked her to take down bitcoin.
“That was the first time I’d ever heard of bitcoin.”
Over the next few years Haun would go on to sit on the board of U.S. bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and teach a class on cryptocurrency at Stanford Law School.
Any serious attempt made by the U.S. Department of Justice to shut down bitcoin inevitably came to naught, with Haun saying, “it would have been akin to saying ‘let’s go prosecute cash.'”
“What we heard with libra were the same criticisms [I’d first heard about bitcoin]” Haun said.
Bitcoin’s epic 2017 bull run catapulted cryptocurrencies into the global consciousness, with some of the world’s biggest companies taking an interest in the technology.
Coindesk
“They were just heightened and they got more attention because of the high-profile nature of the project and the fact that Facebook was involved. I think it would be a really dangerous thing, and frankly a dangerous precedent to start shutting down technology before it’s built.”
I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business around the world. As the founding editor of Verdict.co.uk I reported on how technology is changing business, political trends, and the latest culture and lifestyle. I have covered the rise of bitcoin and cryptocurrency since 2012 and have charted its emergence as a niche technology into the greatest threat to the established financial system the world has ever seen and the most important new technology since the internet itself. I have worked and written for CityAM, the Financial Times, and the New Statesman, amongst others. Follow me on Twitter @billybambrough or email me on billyATbillybambrough.com. Disclosure: I occasionally hold some small amount of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin miners shutting down world wide! Bitmain in trouble. And it looks like the problem is getting worse for all the big miners across the world. Makes me wonder is this is the real sign bottom is close. Thanks for watching Tip jar below. BTC 13qF5ovjByDtFyGX1hYLA7uvhXj1BDH2KX LTC LcdKQ9JSAZRuypVtevhbna7hVo8hHf5UoD Check out my Patreon if you want some gold nuggets. https://www.patreon.com/mrkristof Equipment used to make this video Samsung Galaxy Tab S4- https://amzn.to/2RpbT1E Smooth 4 cell phone gimbal- https://amzn.to/2SEokrE SanDisk 64GB memory card – https://amzn.to/2Da6B63 GoPro Hero 7 Black- https://amzn.to/2PPyerO Canon EOS M50- https://amzn.to/2qUAm3y Flexible tripod- https://amzn.to/2DYQdqf Lighting for studio- https://amzn.to/2TPveLl Gun gear that I use Serpa CQC OWB hoslter- https://amzn.to/2PLhORv Carbon Fiber OWB holster- https://amzn.to/2D6Rj2a Glock 17 sure plug- https://amzn.to/2JNmvoz Need stickers? I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THESE GUYS: http://stickeryeti.ositracker.com/111… Need something done for cheap? Check out Fiverr. http://www.fiverr.com/s2/1c08095a0e BUY A NANO LEDGER S HARDWARE WALLET http://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/49c8 RECOMMENDED CRYPTO EXCHANGES: If your looking to start buying alt coins Binance IS THE BEST altcoin exchange out there. Please join Binance using this link: http://www.binance.com/?ref=10263251 Kucoin exchange is the fastest up and comer and has coins exclusive to it you cant find anywhere else! http://www.kucoin.com/#/?r=28ucr CONNECT WITH ME: Add me on Telegram: @mr_kristof Add me on Snapchat: mr_kristof Find me on Instagram: mr_kristof Add me on Twitter: mr_kristof007 Add me on Xbox Live: VoxiKnight Find me on DTube: d.tube/#!/c/cryptokristof Read my blog on Steemit: steemit.com/@cryptokristof DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE AND I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISER. AND THESE ARE SIMPLY MY OPINIONS #cryptocurrency#BTC#Bitcoin
Researchers from cloud security-as-a-service provider Armor’s Threat Resistance Unit (TRU) have been taking a deep dive into a dozen dark markets and forums. Analysis of the data compiled from trawling these English and Russian-speaking criminal marketplaces has been published in the annual Armor Black Market Report. As well as the usual tracking of the prices for stolen credit cards, bank account credentials and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) for-hire operators, there was one surprising new trend: a Bitcoin to cash conversion scheme that offers criminal buyers the opportunity to buy cash for pennies on the dollar. Paying $800 (£647) in Bitcoin gets you $10,000 (£8,095) in cash.
The Black Market Report
The Armor Black Market Report is the result of researchers from the Armor TRU trawling through underground internet markets and criminal forums. These “dark markets” are notorious for selling just about anything that can be stolen online, from personal and financial data to illicit services such as articles of incorporation for creating shell companies, the distribution malicious spam and even hackers for hire who will scrub your credit history.
The TRU research team analyzed and compiled data from twelve dark markets and criminal forums visited between February and June 2019. It came as no surprise to me that they found cybercriminal after cybercriminal selling credentials for as yet “unhacked” Windows remote desktop (RDP) servers. These are often used by ransomware actors looking for an entry point into corporate networks. That these credentials were being sold for as little as $20 (£16) was unexpected though. The cost of entry, quite literally, to the ransomware threat sector has never been cheaper.
Neither, for that matter, has the cost of cold, hard cash. The TRU researchers found that, partly to get noticed in a crowded market and partly to offset the risk of monetizing stolen banking and credit card accounts, entrepreneurial threat actors are selling cash for between 10 and 12 cents on the dollar. This isn’t, as you might have guessed, a case of criminal philanthropy.
Instead, it’s a method for criminals to offload the risk of monetizing stolen account credentials by transferring the funds available rather than taking possession of them. It’s still money laundering, and it’s illegal, but it puts the most significant weight of risk onto the buyer.
Here’s how the buy cash for Bitcoin scheme works
The seller offers bundles of cash in various amounts, from $2,500 (£2,020) to $10,000 (£8,095) in exchange for a pre-paid fee in Bitcoin. That fee varies between 10% and 12%. Which means that $10,000 of cold cash can be bought for $800 in Bitcoin.
The buyer makes the payment and then chooses how they would like to collect the cash. This can be a straightforward transfer of funds to a bank or PayPal account or wired via Western Union. As well as getting a significant return on their illicit investment, the purchaser no longer has to worry about monetizing online bank account or credit card credentials. It’s a turn-key service; there’s no risky logging into compromised accounts, no money mules to worry about, just the (totally illegal) collection of cash.
“For those scammers who don’t possess the technical skills and a robust money mule network to monetize online bank account or credit card credentials, this is an offer that can be very attractive,” Chris Hinkley, head of Armor’s TRU team said, “the threat actors are still selling financial account and credit card credentials outright, but this clever service gives them an additional channel for monetizing the large amounts of financial data available on the underground.”
Money mules served well by dark market documentation
One of the other interesting things to come out of this analysis was the fact that cybercriminals are selling articles of incorporation and sole proprietorship papers on the dark market. Not shocking, but interesting. While the cash for Bitcoin transactions gets rid of the money mule requirement, there are still plenty of people who adopt that role, and these papers are aimed at them. A money mule is someone who transfers stolen money between accounts in exchange for a fee of between 10% and 20% of the value. For a money mule to be successful, they need to open business bank accounts that don’t trigger fraud alerts on larger transfer volumes. To open these accounts, they need an Employer Identification Number (EIN) assigned by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, and that’s where the documentation to create shell companies enters the equation. The documentation does not come cheap, however. Sole proprietorship papers complete with EIN were found on sale for $1,611 (£1,298), and Articles of Incorporation with EIN were $811 (£653).
I’m a three-decade veteran technology journalist and have been a contributing editor at PC Pro magazine since the first issue in 1994. A three-time winner of the BT Security Journalist of the Year award (2006, 2008, 2010) I was also fortunate enough to be named BT Technology Journalist of the Year in 1996 for a forward-looking feature in PC Pro called ‘Threats to the Internet.’ In 2011 I was honored with the Enigma Award for a lifetime contribution to IT security journalism. Contact me in confidence at davey@happygeek.com if you have a story to reveal or research to share
On Paxful you buy bitcoin from other people in real-time. Trading happens online via live chat. Paxful Vendors can earn six figures from the comfort of their home and many do. Once payment is made and verified by the seller, the bitcoin will be released to your wallet. We’ve built a feedback and reputation system on the advice of the very best traders in the space. Use the simplest bitcoin wallet on earth. You can’t make a mistake and know exactly where to go next.
