Bull’s eye view on Bitcoin: Experts think 20K is in sight

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) isn’t so much rallying today as it seems to be triumphantly marching forth. A week ago it dipped thousands in a 24-hour period and convinced everyone it’d be worth about 10K. Now some experts see it reaching 20K by Christmas .

If you’ve been ‘hodling’ your BTC all year we salute your patience. It must have been hard for you not to sell when Jamie Dimon and countless others all said Bitcoin was worthless. You’ve, so far, proven them wrong.

But here we are again with Bitcoin showing volatility that goes in both directions.

Let’s say you bought in earlier this year when BTC surged to a record-high $4,500 . You basically have 3 free Bitcoins for the price of one. You don’t have to be Goldman Sach’s to know that’s a pretty good ROI.

However, with each new naysayer declaring the bubble to be upon the precipice of bursting, we inch ever closer to the financial cliff that will ruin us all.  Unless it doesn’t, but that’s not the issue at hand.

If Bitcoin is a bubble, when should you pick up your chips and walk away with the house’s money before this whole thing comes crashing down?

The short answer: Who knows? Most likely not today. Probably not this month. Maybe not even next year. Financial experts are having a hard time predicting the outlook.

First things first: Coindesk’s Omkar Godbole indicates, in this article , that things are just fine for right now, and there’s no reason to believe the fabled “correction” is coming in the immediate future. He writes:

Mission accomplished on the first point, at the time of this writing the current value of Bitcoin has surpassed this prediction. The second point, concerning a pullback, he says would indicate a bearish outlook, but only if it remains low for an extended period of time.

The bull’s eye view seems to be 20K is on the way , perhaps this year. And next year could bring much higher value than anything we’ve seen yet, perhaps due to fear of missing out. Nobody wants to be the only person who isn’t a billionaire because they didn’t understand how cryptocurrency works.

Much more important, and tangible, is Bitcoin futures . CME group will begin trading in Bitcoin futures by December 18 th . This could be a game changer. New York’s NASDAQ will also offer Bitcoin Futures, but not until next year. We’ll wait and see how that affects things.

At the end of the day, what you do with your money is between you and your financial advisor. By no means should you make any financial decisions based on things you’ve read online.

You can now send CryptoKitties (and other collectibles) with Opera’s cryptocurrency wallet

Opera is not wasting any time polishing its built-in cryptocurrency browser wallet. The company is expanding its crypto-wallet beta program with two new functionalities: transaction notifications and the ability to send crypto-collectibles like CryptoKitties directly from your wallet.

It is a fairly minor update, but what is significant is that Opera claims it is the first app to offer the ability to send crypto-collectibles directly from your wallet (as opposed to via non-fungible token marketplaces coupled with wallet extensions like MetaMask ).

“We have changed this and made sending crypto-collectibles as easy as sending money via Venmo,” a statement from Opera read. “We feel this makes them more tangible from a user’s perspective.”

Coinbase’s now-defunct Toshi wallet announced support for Ethereum’s non-fungible token protocol (more commonly known as ERC721 ) earlier this year, but it didn’t provide the ability to send crypto-collectibles directly from the browser. Not that this little convenience does much to make crypto-collectibles slightly more useful .

In addition to ERC721 support, Opera’s crypto-wallet will also ping you anytime your balance changes. “We are […] tracking the user’s transactions and notifying them about their progress and completion,” the company explained to Hard Fork. “The same applies if you are receiving a payment, a token or a collectible: you will get notified that there is something new in your wallet.”

Opera has gradually been adding more crypto-specific features to its browser over the past few months. Following the rollout of its native crypto-jacking feature, the company revealed it will be adding a built-in cryptocurrency wallet that would support Ethereum tokens and dApps .

Taking into account the dwindling market share of non-Chrome browsers and the booming blockchain market, it is not all that surprising that Opera is taking aim at cryptocurrency users. It will be interesting to see what Opera has to offer over competitors like Brave, which many have recently critcized for its seemingly flawed business model.

In any case, next time you need an easy way of selling your $170,000 digital kitties, now you know how to do it.

Coinbase admits it accidentally overcharged tons of cryptocurrency buyers [Updated]

Update: Shortly after Coinbase blamed VISA for the overcharging mishap, VISA told TNW that its systems have not been affected, suggesting that the cryptocurrency exchange is to blame for the technical difficulties. Read the full story here .

Following numerous complaints from concerned users on Reddit, popular cryptocurrency exchange desk Coinbase has confirmed a bug in its system resulted in accidentally charging tons of users multiple times for the same purchase – some complained being charged 17 times the original purchase.

“We can confirm that the unexpected charges are originating from our payment processing network, and are related to charges from previous purchases,” a spokesperson for the company said on Reddit. “To the best of our knowledge, these unexpected charges are not permanent and are in the process of being refunded.”

“We are actively investigating some reports from our customers about unexpected credit or debit card charges appearing on their statements from previous Coinbase purchases,” the spokesperson continued.

“You [meaning Coinbase] drained my bank account and now I have nothing,” one user cried out on Reddit. “Welp officially broke, charged 17×1000$ on my account,” said another user .

It remains unclear precisely what caused the glitch, but the exchange desk says it is working on a fix. The statement also implies that users will be reimbursed for the accidental multiple charges. For some reason, the company has yet to register the issue on its official status page .

Meanwhile, Coinbase is asking affected users to point to the faulty transactions in the Reddit thread where they confirmed the bug. You can check out the full thread here . We’ve contacted the company for comment and will update this piece accordingly if we hear back.

Update: Coinbase reached back to TNW with the following statement:

Unfortunately, the statement makes no mention of the expect timeline for the refunds. We’ve asked Coinbase for further clarification.

Update: Coinbase has now said that the issue was Visa’s fault in a series of tweets.