“Who could argue that 2014 was anything but a wild year for bitcoin. It started the year trading at 777.73 according to the PYMNTS.com bitcoin price index and will close at 307.26 After its sharp descent in February, bitcoin just never seemed to get its mojo back. It will end the year being less stable than the ruble, a reputation that it earned for being anywhere from 15 to 70 times more volatile than the euro over the year, according to the PYMNTS.com Bitcoin Volatility Index.
A reoccurring news item for bitcoin in 2014 related to one of two predominant use cases for bitcoin – the purchase of illegal goods and services and the sites that emerged to cater to its patrons. (The other use case, of course, is hoarding in the hopes that the value will increase.) Silk Road 2.0 launched in November 2013 and in February of 2014, was hacked and stripped of roughly $2.6 million worth of currency. That led to the arrest and sentencing of Charlie Shrem who would later in 2014 be found guilty of money laundering over $1 million dollars to the Silk Road to make illegal purchases.
Another by-product of the Silk Road shut-down was the confiscation by the U.S. Federal Marshalls and subsequent auction of the bitcoins it seized. Two auctions of ~80k bitcoin have already taken place (In June Tim Draper was the highest bidder, paid an undisclosed amount for 30,00 bitcoins and in December, the number of registered bidders decreased by 75% while the number of bids fell by 57%) with ~94k still available to the highest bidder.
Later in the year, the stability of bitcoin was threatened by GHash.IO, a bitcoin mining pool, that controlled more than 50 percent of the total computing power of bitcoin. While the group claimed that they would behave, there was the threat of a “51 percent attack” on the cryptocurrency where they could potentially interfere with bitcoin transactions. And, why everyone who isn’t focused on the risks associated with having the world’s money moving across an unregulated, distributed network of miners and exchanges, well, should be given this potential scare.
Additionally bitcoin continued to fight for legitimacy, in China, India, Thailand, Germany, Russia and the United States among others without much forward progress. For a while, it seemed that Australia might be open to bitcoin however bitcoin was hit with a tax blow in December when bitcoin was labeled by the Australian Tax office as not a currency.’
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