Coming up in today’s show:

• The whales are gathering - and why that’s good news for HODLRs!
• Which is easier to spend in the shops - Bitcoing or a bar of gold?
• It’s official! Bitcoin has failed ... but it’s not a total write-off just yet!

The Top 5 Crypto News Stories from this week's show:

5 > Coinbase And Bitfinex Integrate Bitcoin Scaling Upgrade SegWit

Crypto exchange platforms Coinbase and Bitfinex both announced this week that they are now ready to implement the Segregated Witness (SegWit) scalability upgrade for Bitcoin (BTC).

Coinbase tweeted the announcement that it has finished the final testing stages of SegWit for Bitcoin on the platform and is aiming for a 100 percent launch to all customers by mid-next week.  Bitfinex announced an already functioning rollout of SegWit to all customers trading in BTC.

The SegWit upgrade aims to reduce transaction times and fees for transacting in Bitcoin, something that crypto investors have long awaited during the recent period of rising fees and slow transaction rates plaguing Bitcoin users globally.

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SegWit is a Bitcoin protocol improvement that facilitates scaling. The SegWit implementation will provide Coinbase and Bitfinex users with lower transaction fees and improved processing times on transactions across the Bitcoin network. This happens by increasing block size limits by separating signature data from transaction data.

In addition to increasing capacity, SegWit will also effectively fix transaction malleability, a potential attack based on the modification of transaction IDs prior to network confirmation. Further, SegWit also lays the foundation for future Bitcoin development efforts like the implementation of Lightning Network, which will permit the network to process millions to billions of transactions per second.

https://www.inverse.com/article/41499-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-coinbase-segwit

http://www.altcointoday.com/segwit-finally-embraced-coinbase-bitfinex-bright-future-ahead/

https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-and-bitfinex-integrate-bitcoin-scaling-upgrade-segwit

4 > Power usage and the blockchain:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bitcoin-environment-damage-electricity-energy-cash-coins-zinc-mining-servers-a8210591.html

Headlines recently announced that Iceland will apparently use more electricity mining bitcoin this year than it will for powering its homes.

There’s no denying that the electricity used for mining these neoteric codes could devastate the world around us.

But so might the energy we use for sending emails all day, watching Netflix all night, driving cars short distances, flying around the globe and eating steak several times a week or strawberries in the middle of winter.

And as far as payment methods go, there may well be a worse – or at least equally bad – offender out there: humble, old-fashioned cash.

3 > Unknown Investor Buys a Billion Dollars Worth of Bitcoin

The price of a single bitcoin briefly crossed $10,000 this week as details emerged about a mysterious buyer’s bet on the cryptocurrency. (See also: Bitcoin Price Topped $10,000 Amid Cryptocurrency Rally.)

According to a tweet, a bitcoin address bought almost $1 billion worth of bitcoin during a dip in its prices recently. The buyer first bought bitcoin worth $344 million between February 9th and February 12th, when its price traversed the range between $8,500 and $8,900. The buyer doubled down on bitcoin by purchasing 41,000 coins, just before its price hit $10,000.

https://www.trustnodes.com/2018/02/19/unknown-investor-buys-billion-dollars-worth-bitcoin

https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-price-retreats-10k-mysterious-buyer-emerges/

2 > I spent a day trying to pay for things with bitcoin and a bar of gold

In an effort to fairly compare gold and bitcoin in this vein, Business Insider went out into the world to see how easy it was to spend both in everyday transactions. It turns out it isn't easy to spend either. The only person they could find who accepted gold in New York City was Donald Trump in 2011.

Bitcoin is slightly easier to spend. They couldn't use their bitcoin at Subway, which is on a few lists of retailers that accept bitcoin. Le Village, a restaurant in New York's East Village that many have reported accepts bitcoin, was closed down when they tried to eat there. But they did have some luck spending bitcoin. Business Insider found that it was easy to use bitcoin on Overstock.com. Also, the reporter’s daughter's preschool accepts bitcoin for tuition payments. But if you really want to use bitcoin in everyday transactions, you can get a debit card that allows you to spend bitcoin easily.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/trying-to-pay-for-things-with-bitcoin-price-gold-2017-10?r=US&IR=T

Top Story 1 > Bank of England Governor Claims Bitcoin Has ‘Failed’ As A Currency

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bank-of-england-governor-claims-bitcoin-has-failed-as-a-currency

Bank of England (BoE) Governor Mark Carney declared that Bitcoin cannot be considered a legitimate currency by “traditional” definitions, The Telegraph reported Monday, Feb. 19.

At an event at London’s Regent's University, Carney claimed that Bitcoin failed to meet two major requirements of a traditional currency, claiming that Bitcoin is neither a means of exchange, nor a store of value.

"It [cryptocurrency] has pretty much failed thus far on... the traditional aspects of money. It is not a store of value because it is all over the map. Nobody uses it as a medium of exchange," Carney told students of London’s Regent's University.

However, Carney allowed that cryptocurrency’s underlying Blockchain technology  “may still prove useful” due to its decentralised nature:

“Cryptocurrency’s underlying technology may still prove useful as a way to verify financial transactions in a decentralised way,” Carney said.

This week's Crypto quickies:

1) Great info sources:

New favourite podcast > Coin Mastery with Carter Thomas [watch rather than listen] https://www.coinmastery.com/ep1-welcome-to-the-coin-mastery-podcast/

Magic Poop Cannon on Trading View: https://www.tradingview.com/u/MagicPoopCannon/

Crypto Vince: https://www.facebook.com/CryptoVinceTeam/

2) Zen Master’ Steven Seagal Confirms He Is Face Of New ‘Superior’ Coin Bitcoiin2Gen

https://cointelegraph.com/news/zen-master-steven-seagal-confirms-he-is-face-of-new-superior-coin-bitcoiin2gen

“Zen Master” and Hollywood actor Steven Seagal has announced that he is the new brand ambassador for Bitcoiin2Gen (B2G), a new cryptocurrency that claims to be a “superior or more advanced version of [Satoshi Nakamoto’s] Original Bitcoin”, in a tweet Feb. 20.

Bitcoiin2Gen published a press release on Feb. 12 announcing that due to Seagal’s beliefs that “the development of the physical self is essential to protect the spiritual man,” the actor is “obvious as brand ambassador” for the new cryptocurrency, adding emphatically: “Steven Seagal has become a believer of Bitcoiin2Gen.”

3) How Bitcoin has given us a lame excuse to swear on this podcast ... http://foulomatic.hnldesign.nl/#