Bitcoin price LIVE: BTC drops $600 as Robinhood arrives with his merry millennials
BITCOIN'S price is hovering around the $11,000 mark as repeated threats of regulation sound out from the Davos conference. However good news has arrived in the form of Robinhood, a stock trading mobile app aimed at getting millennials saving.
3.05pm - UPDATE - The taxman gets itchy fingers
Bitcoin, Ripple, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies have grabbed the attention of tax authorities across the globe as anonymous traders benefit from massive profits from the virtual currency boom, according to a leading expert.
Dr Garrick Hileman, who has advised the CIA and US army on cryptocurrencies, has now warned would-be bitcoin, cryptocurrency investors that 2018 will be the year of a taxation crackdown on cryptocurrency profits.
Speaking to Express.co.uk, at London Blockchain Week, Dr Hileman said: “From a regulatory perspective, we are seeing growing interest from tax authorities.
Read the report here.
1.57pm - UPDATE - Bitcoin on the slide
Bitcoin is down at $10,542, a $605 fall on the day so far.
12.17pm - UPDATE - Money to spend, 'in da club'?
Here's the report following yesterday's news that US rapper 50 Cent has become an accidental bitcoin millionaire.
Bitcoin is now priced at $10,462.
Ethereum is at $1,014, Ripple at $1.17.
11.34am - UPDATE - Bitcoin falls
Bitcoin is down to $10,441, a fall of close to $700 on the day so far.
11.32am - UPDATE - XRP down 30 percent?
Ripple’s price has fallen by almost 30 percent in a week from last Friday's high, while bitcoin and Ethereum are also in the red today. Here is the latest Ripple news and live updates from the cryptocurrency markets.
Follow Ripple here.
10.14am - UPDATE - The four triggers of the next crypto crash
Julian Hosp, author of the recently published book "Cryptocurrencies Simply Explained”, identifies the four potential triggers of the next crypto crash.
Mr Hosp identifies regulation, exchanges, credit and tether as the next sticky issues as bitcoin moves past speculative hype, towards mainstream adoption.
Read the report here.
Bitcoin's price has fallen $608 on the day so far and is now at $10,508.
Ripple is down at $1.17 and Ethereum is at $1,007.
8.49am - UPDATE - 'Ripple is off the pace as a cryptocurrency'
Jens Bader, payments expert and co-founder of a brand new payment company MuchBetter, said: “Ripple is somewhat off the pace, both in terms of its market position and its identity as a cryptocurrency.
“It might be a good complimentary currency to bitcoin and ethereum, but since it is a centralised system, it does not live up to the brief of what a cryptocurrency is meant to do, and the USPs of blockchain technology.”
Greg Adams, proprietor and managing director at blokt.com, a site which reports on blockchain and cryptocurrencys' said: “Ripple was designed to provide cross-border settlement between banks. It is solving the problem of slow settlement speeds and high operational costs.
“However, XRP is centralised and was not intended for retail use, it already has an extremely high valuation so I would advise prospective buyers to steer clear for now.”
Read the full report here.
8.06am - UPDATE - Robinhood and his merry millennials
Bitcoin's price is at $11,618 a rise of $31 on the day so far.
Etheruem is $1,058 and ripple is priced $1.25.
Robinhood, a mobile app aimed at winning the next generation of savers has boarded the bitcoin bus, confirming that it plans to roll out bitcoin and ether trading services through its popular mobile apps next month.
Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev told CoinDesk: "We've come to understand that cryptocurrencies as an asset have exhibited clear and underlying resiliency and have integrated themselves as part of a diversified and balanced portfolio".
Mr Tenev, and his co-founder friend Baiju Bhatt have certainly made investing easier for millennials, and in an interview last year the pair claimed that they'd won the battle to get millennials - best understood as the generational demographic cohort following Generation X of 22-34-year-olds - to buy stocks instead of coffee.
Mr Tenev told Business Insider last year that the money being invested in their app comes out of people's spending money, and not other savings products.
He said: "So this is money that would have been spent on coffee or on Amazon or just discretionary stuff, and because Robinhood has the experience that you might get from buying a physical product or something on Amazon, it sort of feels like spending in a way that's very positive and very engaging, but people end up building a portfolio over time."
However investments in Snap or Apple are very different animal to cryptocurrencies.
The founder told Coindesk that the move could help lure cryptocurrency enthusiasts to its traditional products, while also giving users normally focused on traditional investment vehicles exposure to cryptocurrency.
The firm recently hit 3 million accounts and $100 billion in total transacted volume.