$4000 is the Bitcoin Price Prediction for 2016-2017

I can see the death of Bitcoin.......If but survived then only bitcoin.

As per Astrological chart the future of Bitcoin is depend on 2017.....If survived then 2017 onwards only bitcoin is the only Immortal Currency who rules world.

"The price of bitcoin could test its 2013 highs of above $1,100 next year and then pick up speed to rise to $4,400 by the end of 2017.

That would be due to a number of factors… including an increased acceptance of payments in bitcoin by big companies and authorities, rapidly growing interest and investment in the "blockchain" technology that underpins bitcoin transactions, and also more demand from China as its currency weakens and the economy slows."

11 Bitcoin Startups That Went Bust in 2015

This year was a time of further consolidation for the bitcoin industry.

After what you might call a 'Wild West' period (when it seemed everyone with the urge was setting up their own bitcoin-based service), the space is now rapidly becoming more dominated by bigger, more professional outfits, often with serious funding to get them off to a solid start.

And while some big bitcoin names made the news this year for positive reasons, some firms had to report that they were closing down.

A variety of reasons brought about these failures, from increased competition, to a lack of cash or even, perhaps, fraudulent practices.

In 2015, around 11 bitcoin firms went belly up. Here's our look at what happened:

GAW Miners

During 2015, GAW Miners fell into deeper and deeper trouble amid growing controversy over its mining operations and failed promises that it would honor a $20 price floor for its own cryptocurrency, paycoin.

Later staff exits and email leaks were the death groans of a company that had always courted controversy, and eventually it faded away mid year with a whimper rather than a bang.

In the months since, GAW has been the target of civil lawsuits from customers seeking to recoup losses, and worse, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the firm's former CEO, Josh Garza, with the fraudulent sale of unlicensed securities and operation of a Ponzi scheme.

Mining ASIC Technologies

Mining ASICs Technologies (MAT) was declared bankrupt by a Maastricht, Netherlands, judge at the close of last year, after company CEO Marc Coumans filed for bankruptcy.

The firm used a business model that asked people to pay 35% upfront for its SHA-256 miners but when they failed to appear for most customers in September 2014, the word 'scam' started being bandied about on forums.

The firm responded that there was a problem with the air cooling of the chips, and that orders would be sent when resolved.

Bar for a few customers, this never happened and after a tiff with the producer of its chips, the firm eventually declared itself bankrupt, saying calls for refunds had finished it off.

Bonafide

Bitcoin reputation startup Bonafide ceased operations in November, less than one year after receiving funding $850,000 from investors including Blockchain Capital and Quest Venture Partners.

The startup offered an API that provided reputation data to bitcoin firms offering exchange, wallet and other consumer services.

Co-founders Karthik Balasubramanian and Brian Moyer stated their belief that the movement of investor interest away from consumer-facing applications for the technology was one factor in their demise.

Declines in consumer bitcoin spending were also cited as a factor in the shut down.

Brawker

Bitcoin buying service Brawker closed its doors at the end of April, citing competition and workload issues.

The decentralized platform, launched in April of 2014, allowed consumers to purchase products with bitcoin.

The firm told us at the time: "Buying bitcoin with credit cards is now possible, and more and more merchants are accepting digital currencies."

BTC Guild

Long-running bitcoin mining pool BTC Guildceased operating at the end of June, citing the finalization of New York State's BitLicense as a primary motivator. It said at the time that the pool could not afford any legal threats that may arise as a result of the New York regulatory framework.

A spokesperson for the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) later told CoinDesk "miners and mining pools are exempt from the BitLicense".

Buttercoin

US bitcoin marketplace Buttercoin closed in April, despite launching with $2.1m in investor backing in late 2013.

Saying that it was "100% secure and solvent", the platform blamed a lack of VC interest for its closure, saying:

"With the dip in bitcoin interest among Silicon Valley investors, we weren't able to generate enough venture capital interest to continue funding Buttercoin."

Since its closure, the US market has seen the rise of a number of regulated US exchanges including those offered by Coinbase, Gemini and itBit.

CoinTerra

Bitcoin mining company CoinTerra filed for bankruptcy in January, saying it would be unable to repay unsecured investors and naming hundreds of creditors in its filing.

CoinTerra had between $10m and $50m in assets, with liabilities within the same range, according to court documents. The firm has filed for  bankruptcy protection, meaning it is likely to liquidate all assets in its bid to repay secured creditors.

The closure came soon after CoinTerra became the target of a lawsuit launched by C7 Data Centers, a data center colocation services provider based in Utah.

Harborly

Texas-based bitcoin exchange Harborly shut downin August saying the closure was a result of insufficient resources to run both the firm and a separate project that co-founder and CEO Connor Black described as "a growth hacking tool and service".

Digital currency regulation also played into the decision.

Black said: “We were surprised again and again by the resources it took to effectively adhere to the compliance requirements laid out in the US and beyond.”

Swarm

Decentralised crowdfunding platform Swarm shut down in September following an internal dispute and cash issues, according to CoinTelegraph.

The firm allowed companies to raise funds via cryptographic shares using Swarm's own cryptocurrency.

Swarm's co-founder and CEO Joel Dietz allegedly wrote in a blog post (now removed) that three factors brought Swarm's downfall: the co-founder and designer left the project, the Swarm team disagreed about making its software open source and a deal with a startup accelerator that drained $200,000 from Swarm's coffers.

Yacuna

European exchange Yacuna made an orderly retreat from trading in November after a relatively short time in the cryptocurrency space. In an email to customers it informed them of the closure and advised customers to withdraw all funds.

Talking about the closure, executive director and chief compliance officer Mark Caruso told CoinDesk:

"We offered the service for free since we believe in the disruptive potential of blockchain technology. However, the lack of significant volume and a growth rate that remained below expectations led to the decision of shutting down the service."

37coins

Bitcoin remittance startup 37coins closed its doorsback in August, when the company announced it was halting operations and closing its SMS-based wallet. The firm left users until 30th December to withdraw their funds.

Notable participants in Plug and Play's bitcoin startup group, 37coins aimed to use low-cost cellphone technology as a means to enable cheap transactions.

According to the team, however, development came across hurdles that ultimately proved insurmountable.

Did we leave anyone out? Let us know in the comments below.

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What's In Store For Bitcoin In 2016?

This year was a difficult one for cryptocurrencies as they struggled with volatile prices and negative press.

Many view currencies like bitcoin as tools for criminals and investors tended to shy away from the currency as volatile price swings made it difficult to make accurate predictions. However, many believe that 2016 could be a monumental year for bitcoin as and the underlying technology that the coin runs on gains notoriety.

Supply Cut

Unlike traditional currencies, the number of bitcoins available to the public is controlled by mining computers. The computers essentially solve mathematical puzzles in order to release new bitcoins. The system was also designed to keep the number of bitcoins finite at 21 million coins, a figure to be reached in the next 125 years.

Not only that, but the reward for mining bitcoins would be cut in half every four years, and July 2016 marks the next time that cut is set to take place.

Related Link: Ben Bernanke Sees Serious Problems With Bitcoin

Price Increase

Many believe that halving the number of bitcoins received from each mining transaction will give the cryptocurrency's price a boost. While it has been well known for years that bitcoin supply would be reduced, the fact that the bitcoin market is still so new has kept traders from fully pricing the event in.

Blockchain Investments

Bitcoin could also see a boost in the coming year as blockchain gains popularity across several industries. The ledger-like system that bitcoin runs on has been touted as one of the most important technological advances of the decade, and many see it revolutionizing the way several industries do business.

Blockchain has been suggested as a way to improve the real estate market, make the music industry more transparent and improve the speed and efficiency of financial transactions.

Bitcoin Milestone: 15 Million Bitcoins Mined and 100 Million Transactions Reached

Bitcoin has reached a new technological milestone today. Since its birth in 2008, 15 million bitcoins has been mined, more than 100 million transactions have been settled by the Bitcoin network and mining difficulty is close to reaching 100 billion.

According to the statistics provided by blockchain.info, the mining difficulty has risen by nearly 250% since January of 2015, recording the fastest annual increase of difficulty since 2008.

The number of transactions processed by the Bitcoin network have reached 100 million, as the number of daily bitcoin transactions increased by five times since January of 2015. Bitcoin experts predict that the worldwide recognition of bitcoin and established financial institutions’ growing interest towards Bitcoin and the Bitcoin blockchain technology network have played a vital role in the growth of Bitcoin as a currency and as a technological protocol.

The market cap of Bitcoin has also reached a yearly high at around US$6.34 billion and is close to recovering from its decline in 2014, amid the collapse of then the largest bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox.

Bitcoin, which has had one of its best year since 2013 also surpassed the growth of major reserve currencies and top-performing developing currencies such as the Malaysian Ringgit. Bitcoin has also performed exceptionally well against the world’s largest currencies including pound sterling, US dollars and Japanese yen, becoming the world’s best performing currency of the year.

Although financial experts argue the value of Bitcoin and criticize its independence (decentralized nature), bitcoin is beginning to be recognized as an independent currency by an increasing number of central banks and financial establishments around the world.

Bitcoin since 2014, has almost fully recovered from its slump following the Mt. Gox heist and all the negativity portrayed by media outlets and news networks around the world.

Continuing this success, in 2016, bitcoin experts predict that bitcoin will reach another milestone as a developing currency. 

Daily Bitcoin Price Analysis: Bitcoin In A Trend

As we expected, on Christmas Eve the Bitcoin pricegot in a narrow corridor of $449 - $455. Today is a holiday and there will be limited trading. Also no news that could affect the price of the Dollar is expected. Therefore, today December 25, we expect that the price of Bitcoin will remain in the corridor of $445 - $465. The resistance level is $465 and the support level is $440.

 As we can see, the latest positive macroeconomic statistics from the US gave the Dollar a support only for a limited time. Then again, the Dollar came under pressure and decreased against other currencies, including the BitcoinCT r:  10. Now a good question is: how long can the Dollar be a full-weight competitor for Bitcoin? If Bitcoin is growing against the Dollar, does this mean that the Dollar is losing its position as the world currency? Or does it mean that Bitcoin is gaining popularity in parallel with the strong Dollar?

This analysis and forecast are the personal opinions of the author and are not a recommendation to buy or sell Bitcoins.

Bitcoin is Entering the Age of Practicality

As the end of the year approaches, it is customary to begin thinking of what's next.

We try to assess what changes can be made to better our lives, our businesses and our relationships. We ask what can we do differently that will push us positively towards our anticipated outcomes.

In the spirit of this thinking, let's discuss bitcoin and blockchain technologies.

Bitcoin and blockchain technologies are still in their infancy. Yet, millions of dollars have been invested and many companies have reaped tremendously from early adoption.

But, it's important to note that the companies that have had the most success have done so by creating a foundation for the entire industry.

As when building a house, the foundation is the first and possibly the most important element. Without it, the house would fall, and any good builder knows that you have to give the foundation a chance to cure before building on top of it.

The companies we'll list below have built a pretty solid foundation on top of the ground that the core developers provided. The only problem is, sleeping on a concrete slab can prove to be uncomfortable.

Enter the age of practicality.

The next steps

With the foundation laid, it is time to begin building practical solutions to real-world problems.

People want to put all kinds of things on the blockchain – from gold to furniture receipts. If it exists, someone has pitched that it should be on a blockchain. But the blockchain is not some magic wand that solves all problems.

The blockchain, at its core, is a database. It may be the Liam Neeson of databases, but still it's a database.

This new age of practicality must be filled with companies solving real problems – problems that could not be solved before the gift Satoshi left for us (before returning to his alternate dimension).

We as an industry must be able to look into every industry and every discipline and see what challenges a distributed, immutable ledger can really solve.

We have debated on Reddit and other forums about what can be. But the new age must be filled with companies that not only see what can be, but build what should be.

We have to embrace people from all disciplines and lend a ear to what struggles they have. We have to then be creative enough to innovate through cross-discipline association.

The good examples

There are a handful of companies that have already prepared us for this future.

Companies like Blockcypher have become the Amazon Web Services for blockchain tech. They began with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, litecoin and dogecoin, and because of this early versatility, can now easily create private blockchain solutions with their full suite of tools.

Companies like Coinbase and BitGo have become the 'First National Banks of Bitcoin', and are expanding to be Global Bitcoin and FX banks. They are providing a foundation for developers to build all types of transaction-heavy applications.

Elsewhere, Zapchain has taken full advantage of the simple API Coinbase provides for tipping to reimagine social communities.

Chain and the recently acquired Blockstack.io, focus (or focused) heavily on private blockchains and the tools to interact with them. R3 has done a great job of grabbing a piece of mindshare at some of the largest banks in the world, creating a foundation for meaningful engagement with incumbents.

Michael J Casey at MIT Media Lab is helping to lead us toward this age by encouraging the MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT School of Engineering to work together on blockchain technology, combining two world-class schools at a world-class institution.

These types of actions will begin to create the walls of our industry's house. They will help discover new problems that we can then solve with technology.

At Fluent, we've found a very specific problem by talking to industry leaders and professionals about issues in their supply chains. Equipped with our knowledge of blockchain technology, we were able to build a solution that will solve this problem in a way that was impossible without the core technology.

The beginning of the new year will be filled with optimism and glee, but when the confetti is cleared, we'll need to move forward toward solving real issues.

Bring on the age of practicality.