In Which Are Listed For Quotation On The Official List Of A Securities Exchange: Fill & Download for Free

Hello,A stock exchange is an organized market, where second-hand securities that have been listed thereon, may be bought and sold, in a safe, quick and convenient manner.Stock exchange allows dealing only in listed securities. In fact, stock exchange maintains an official list of securities that could be purchased and sold at its floor. Unlisted securities i.e., securities which do not figure in the official list of the stock exchange; could not be dealt in the stock exchange.Stock exchange is in organised market for dealing in securities. Activities of a stock exchange are governed by a recognized code of conduct, apart from statutory regulations.All transactions in securities at the stock market are effected through authorized members only.Here is the role of stock exchange:Evaluation of Securities:Stock exchange determines prices of various securities (in terms of their real worth) through the interplay of demand and supply forces. Prices at which transactions in securities take place are recorded and published, in the form of market quotations.Agency of Capital Formation:Stock exchange is an agency of capital formation. It draws the savings of the man in the street into productive investment channels. Since stock exchange provides a safe and convenient market for liquidity and investment purposes; people are induced to save and invest in securities.Through stock exchange, savings of people which otherwise would have gone into destructive channels, are routed into productive channels.Agency of Capital Formation:Stock exchange is an agency of capital formation. It draws the savings of the man in the street into productive investment channels. Since stock exchange provides a safe and convenient market for liquidity and investment purposes; people are induced to save and invest in securities.Through stock exchange, savings of people which otherwise would have gone into destructive channels, are routed into productive channels.Control Over Company Managements:Stock exchange very directly exercises control over the managements of companies, whose securities are listed with it. In fact, those companies whose securities are listed with a stock exchange have to abide by the rules and regulations of the stock exchange.Liquidity:Stock exchange is a convenient meeting place for buyers and sellers of second-hand securities. Investors who have a preference for liquidity (i.e. cash) can sell their securities; and those who wish to invest in securities can buy the same. Since stock exchange ensures liquidity of investment; people are induced to buy securities.Regards.

Ethics and legal nuances aside (which we’ll get to), my main interest here is just how much of a mess this whole story has been at nearly every level.Now, yes, I promised myself a while back that I’d stop writing about Musk and the media and all my concerns with BuzzFeed. And I really do wish I could honor those promises! I wish, often and in earnest, that I could reach a place of acceptance with the idea of so many professionals not feeling obligated to carefully read the stuff they’re writing about, and I really wish I could think less about how we’re trusting them and the institutions they represent to help keep this world from descending into chaos and darkness and measles epidemics.But here we are again, so we might as well get going.ContextMusk infamously did that thing last year where he tweeted “funding secured” when the reality was more like “some funding verbally offered”, which caused all sorts of market swings and made lots of investors very angry, leading the SEC to punish Musk by stripping his chairmanship of Tesla, fining him $40m*, and making him promise to stop tweeting stuff that would cause markets to flip out without a Very Serious Adult first saying “ok, go ahead”.(Tesla’s resulting comms policy assigned these approval powers to Tesla’s general counsel and a new “Designated Securities Counsel” who cleverly chose to remain nameless, with the CFO serving as backup adult.)It’s now been a little over two months since this new policy kicked in, during which time the SEC hadn’t found cause to complain, right up until Musk decided to shake things up with this tweet last week:Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2019Now, I want to call attention to one detail in this tweet that will turn out to be really important: Musk said cars, not Model 3s specifically.(Also, I looked it up and Tesla did produce cars in 2011. Only Roadsters, and only in the hundreds. But this feels like Exhibit #6,676 supporting the case that we should all just agree to take Musk’s tweets for what they are — i.e., shower thoughts and off-the-cuff directional updates, not precise statements of material facts; which is to say that they’re, you know, tweets and not short-form 8-K disclosures. Like, there may be legal arguments against this re-categorization, but I’m pretty sure I speak for ~98% of people in saying that this adjustment would make everyone a whole lot happier, with the added upside of giving the laziest journalists fewer things to pearl-clutch and tut-tut about.)Anyway, the above tweet was followed up some four hours later with this one:Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week. Deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2019Both were posted while the NASDAQ was closed, which I think is itself a hint that Musk’s intention was maybe less “let’s manipulate the market!” and more “500k is the type of number Justin Timberlake would get more excited about in a dramatic restaurant scene!”. While there’s an obvious and serious argument that CEOs ought to reject these aggrandizing impulses (especially Musk!), there’s also a not-totally-offsetting argument that Twitter has a way of inducing bad decisions, with the sin here being fractional to that of #karajack.(Alternatively, Musk simply got the numbers confused, which would put him in the company of the majority of people involved in this whole dumb thing.)Whatever Musk’s motivation(s), the SEC, uh, didn’t care much for the whole episode. They guessed correctly that Musk hadn’t gotten sign-off on his first tweet, which they opted to interpret as equivalent to Musk saying “lmao, I was crossing my fingers when I said I’d stop doing exactly this sort of thing”.As such, the SEC filed a request with the SDNY district court to find Musk in contempt of his agreement. **And this is where things get interesting:The SEC argued that the original tweet violated both the deal and Tesla’s new comms policy because it contained material information that hadn’t been pre-approved by counsel.Bradley Bondi, a former SEC guy, answered on Tesla’s behalf (pages 24-26 here), arguing that Musk’s original tweet was just a bungled rehash of a disclosure made in Tesla’s Q4 statement (“we are targeting annualized Model 3 output in excess of 500,000 units sometime between Q4 of 2019 and Q2 of 2020”), and that this original statement had been properly vetted per the agreement, meaning that Musk didn’t do anything wrong in repeating it without explicit approval, but simply made an honest mistake in repeating it incorrectly.The WSJ subsequently put out a story about the SEC’s lawsuit, which prompted someone on Twitter to respond back with this:Read the transcripts from Q4 earnings. He said it there pic.twitter.com/Q6kw5oZBdM— JonP (@JPUConn) February 26, 2019(You have to click the tweet to see the whole excerpt. For those who can’t open it, the money quote is Musk saying "maybe on the order of 350,000 to 500,000 Model 3s, something like that this year”, either in reference to hoped for sales or deliveries. Note that this general lack of distinction between production and sales and deliveries leaked into the SEC’s suit and much of the reporting on this subject. Those numbers should all be close-ish, but would never be the same. Using arbitrary numbers, Tesla could very well produce 350k Model 3s, sell only 315k of them, and deliver only 300k within the calendar year, etc.)Anyway, as Musk is wont to do, he then did the other type of tweeting that his employees and peers and friends and loved ones and local baristas probably all implore him to stop doing, opting to respond to the quoted excerpt with:That all in mind, here’s a non-exhaustive list of grievances:The SEC lawsuit failed to note the distinction between “cars” and “Model 3s”, which is almost inexplicable to me (by which I really mean I wish it was inexplicable, as all the obvious explanations seem bad).BuzzFeed News (I’m fighting a powerful urge to put the word news in quotation marks here) also got it wrong: “Musk’s tweet was potentially misleading because it suggested that the company would make 500,000 Model 3 cars this year, conflicting with earlier reports from the company that it would deliver more than 350,000 of those vehicles in 2019.”(Quick sidebar to unpack how bad and representative this single sentence is. First, Musk didn’t say Model 3s. Second, reports is plural, yet the author didn’t link to a single such report. I looked and couldn’t find any public source for the 350k claim. Third, the author’s use of “potentially” reminds me of how some people feel this reflexive need to lace their arguments with adjectives, yet don’t go on to consider what these added words actually mean. In a similar vein, Musk’s tweet didn’t “suggest” anything. It stated something. I guess this is the standard of copyediting you get after significant layoffs — or just in an era where enough people agree that words don’t have to mean things.)Whatever happened to live pushback? Musk’s estimate on the earnings call (of 350k-500k Model 3s, in whatever context) was more or less irreconcilable with the actual earnings report, which clearly said “we are expecting to deliver 360,000 to 400,000 vehicles in 2019” (emphasis mine). Just under 100k of Tesla’s 2018 deliveries were S and X models, which is a number Musk suggested would decline only slightly in 2019. If we assume 85k non-3 deliveries this year, this means a forecast of some 275-315k 3s, which I’m pretty sure is enough fewer than 350k-500k to be worth at least a quick clarification question. Amazingly, none of the people on the call asked said question, despite the enormous bottom-line impact inherent in the disparity. ***Putting this all together, I’m led to a few conclusions:Nothing in this SEC lawsuit is really about protecting investors. Musk’s tweets came after-hours and were corrected before the market re-opened (some damage can happen after-hours, but you’d be hard-pressed to find real litigants who sustained meaningful losses).[NOTE: Because I’m a curious kitten, I asked Glenn Luk to look into the real-time impact of Musk’s original tweet. His response: “Around 5-10k shares changed hands from 7:15pm to the end of extended trading hours. So around $1.5-3 million worth. These impacted shares traded in the $306.50 to $307.50 range. The official closing price on that day was $305.64.” I have two general comments here: 1. If you aren’t following Glenn, you should be. 2. This impact is trivial. Even at the high end of $3m, that’s 0.005% of Tesla’s float. Also, some of the trades in the remaining 45 mins following Musk’s first tweet actually went for less $/share than those immediately before!]The SEC mostly seems interested in forcing Musk to both respect the system more and to stop making fun of them. While that first concern is certainly valid, their actual response here seems antagonistic to said hopes. Their suit was weak and lazy. Whatever Tesla/Musk did wrong here, they also self-policed. I can see the logic in maybe a stern letter, but it’s hard to see practical value in the route they took. While I’m vaguely sympathetic to what they must have felt were a lack of alternative options, this ultimately feels like a failure of creativity and/or latitude. They should be able to suggest things like “hey, you made a mistake, now go make a $10m good faith donation to charity”, with those amounts doubling for every additional trivial infraction. Or if they really wanted to get through to him, they could force him to donate said money to BuzzFeed (whom I’m told could really use the help).The SEC also over-reached (page 12) in arguing that even if Musk had been accurately quoting his previously-vetted Q4 disclosure, that said vetting is only valid for 48 hours per Tesla’s own comms policy — which I find to be a dubious and/or disingenuous reading of said policy. Like, are they seriously trying to argue that Musk wouldn’t be free to repeat an exact quote from a past disclosure without re-approval? That’s the sort of argument that makes it hard to take the whole complaint seriously.Anyway, moving on from the SEC, let’s talk about the people who make money reporting on Tesla in a professional capacity. My restrained take? Most would benefit from spending less time on Twitter and more doing their homework with an appropriate level of diligence.(If any journalists are reading this and feeling keen to turn the tables, please note that I offer financial rewards for corrections. All are welcome to pick holes where they can. I’ve been careful here, but would also be gracious and enthusiastic in improving the accuracy of this piece where possible. Though I don’t make a dime off these posts, I’m happy to pay such incentives out-of-pocket on principle.)Lastly, we have Musk. He, uh, really needs to stop doing this, if for no other reason than that he’s an example that many model. He needs to lead the way, and that means using Twitter responsibly. The tweet was wrong, whatever the cause, and it should have been right. It’s (arguably) a small thing in itself. But it’s also value-destruction in its purest form. This can only hurt the causes he cares about.NOTES & EDITS:* There were actually two fines: $20m to Musk, and $20m to Tesla. Musk partially offset the latter by buying $20m in stock directly from Tesla. (I say partially because Musk got stock in return, which had a dilutive effect on existing shares. So it’s less that he paid $40m in fines and more that he paid $20m and then supplied Tesla with $20m in ready cash to pay theirs.)** More precisely, their request was that Musk “show cause” to prove to the judge that he wasn’t in contempt.*** Emmanuel Rosner from Deutsche Bank kinda-almost asked this question, but ultimately narrowed his context to why their official estimates were so cautious. It isn’t clear to me how anyone could come up with a useful price assessment without clarity on the single largest item affecting Tesla this year. Either there’s a substantial reason to believe that Tesla can produce/sell/deliver 350k+ Models 3s this year, or there isn’t — which feels like something we should desire a clear answer to, which I’m told is the point of earnings calls.PS - One of the things on the call (transcript here) that I’m surprised didn’t get more coverage is the exchange between Musk and Gene Munster about Waymo. Musk laughed off their recent valuation projections, claiming that Tesla has 95% of all accumulated training miles thanks to their fleet size. Now, this isn’t quite the same as autonomous miles. Waymo has more of the latter. But the argument implied here is that miles driven where the autonomous driving system is taking in data even while not fully engaged are still worth an awful lot, with Tesla having the lion’s share of these. There’s a lot to this that’s beyond my pay grade, but I’m a little miffed that more people who do know about this aren’t talking more about it.EDIT (03-12-19)Musk’s legal team (well, one of them) filed a response to the SEC’s “show cause” filing, and, well, it’s a hell of a read. Focusing on just the new stuff:(i) The SEC’s second request for info came at 10:28am PT on a Sunday, with a deadline to respond by 5pm PT the same day. Musk’s lawyer (Bondi) responded back around 5:30pm PT basically saying “I’ve been off email all day dealing with another US Attorney’s office about a different trial, and I obviously can’t get you answers on a Sunday, but I’ll get back to you ASAP”. The SEC responded by filing with the court Monday afternoon (3:10pm PT), which honestly just feels petty.(ii) While I already covered one way in which the SEC misread Tesla’s new comms policy above (i.e., the facially silly argument about needing re-approval for something that had already been publicly disclosed), there’s also this bit:While I’m not entirely sold on Musk’s argument that his “500k” tweet was 100% justifiable, the SEC’s reading here is the sort of thing you kinda expect from a document written angrily and in haste. As Musk’s team points out later in their filing, if you take out the “depending on its significance” qualifier, the level of restriction would almost certainly become a first amendment issue. It’s fine to make Musk look for pre-approval for likely market-moving stuff, but interpreting Tesla’s policy so broadly is a definite reach.(iii) If you scroll down to the bottom of the PDF, there’s an interesting appendice from Christopher Noe, an MIT Sloan lecturer brought on to quantify the materiality of Musk’s original tweet by way of how it moved the market. I’m pleased to report that he came to the same conclusion that Glenn and I did as it concerned the after-hours activity. But where he went beyond us is looking at the pre-market trading the next day (after Musk’s “correction” tweet). Interestingly, the stock went slightly up (0.7%), which indicates that investors saw no net concern. Noe also looked through the analyst reports available on Thomson One and couldn’t find any that referenced the tweets prior to the SEC’s filing, further suggesting that no one really cared. (Noe separately pointed out that after-hours trading following the SEC’s filing was ~17x brisker than after Musk’s original tweet, which does kinda make you think about relative harm.)(iv) While it’s true that Musk has never actually gotten any of his tweets pre-approved since the new policy went into place (though he did begin doing so after the most recent filing), it’s also true that his self-filtering had made said step unnecessary. (His lawyers even went so far as to challenge the SEC to find a single tweet that would have required pre-approval, which is a pretty strong gambit.) And given that the Very Serious Adults were reviewing Musk’s tweets in real-time to flag any that straddled the line (as they did successfully here), it’s hard to argue that they were acting in contempt. IMO, the SEC was so worked up about his TV interview (“I don’t respect the SEC”) that they failed to see this with any objectivity. If they were waiting for their moment to nab him, this wasn’t it.

It’s impossible to spend much time in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world without hearing about Ethereum, or ETH for short. In this article, you’ll learn what Ethereum is, what makes it different and why it’s better than Bitcoin, at least for certain purposes.Guess the price directionBitcoin/TetherBTCUSDT33,743.81−2.71337493372733743.81UpDownWhat is the Ethereum cryptocurrency?Strictly speaking, Ethereum refers to an open-source software platform that is based on blockchain technology, enabling developers to create decentralised applications, or dApps. However, Ethereum is also used to refer to the Ether coin (ETH), a cryptocurrency built on the Ethereum platform. When someone talks about buying, trading or paying with Ethereum, they mean the Ether currency.Ethereum’s historyEthereum’s story starts with Vitalik Buterin, who became involved with Bitcoin as a 17-year-old programmer in 2011. Buterin became aware of Bitcoin’s shortcomings and created Ethereum as superior blockchain technology.I thought [people in the Bitcoin community] weren’t approaching the problem in the right way. I thought they were going after individual applications; they were trying to kind of explicitly support each [use case] in a sort of Swiss Army knife protocol.— Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder.A timeline of Ethereum’s early history:2013: Buterin released a white paper describing the basis for Ethereum.2014: Buterin and the other co-founders crowdfunded Ethereum through an ICO that raised more than $18 million.2015: The first live release of Ethereum, known as Frontier, was launched.What is Ethereum’s purpose?Ethereum is a blockchain technology platform designed to enable a large variety of functions. A popular comparison is if Bitcoin is e-mail, then Ethereum is the whole Internet.Ethereum is used for computer services that are based on dApps and smart contracts, which saves time and money by eliminating intermediaries, third-party brokers and inefficient monopolies like big companies or even government authorities.In essence, it follows the decentralised philosophy of Bitcoin but is applied to much more than just money.What is Ethereum written in?Given that the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) functions as a ‘world computer’ with many nodes, it uses multiple programming languages, including C++, Python, Ruby, Go and Java. A specialised language called Solidity is used to write smart contracts in the Ethereum Virtual Machine.ETH’s hard forkIn 2016, $50 million worth of Ether was stolen by a hacker, an act that raised concerns about the platform’s security. The resulting controversy split the community, and Ethereum forked into two blockchains: Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).ETH tokensEthereum has both the Ether (ETH) crypto coin and Ether tokens. The latter can function as a currency within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). ETH tokens are transferred within the EVM to execute smart contracts.What is a smart contract in Ethereum?A smart contract is a computer program that functions as a contract, i.e., it binds individuals and/or businesses to meet obligations.The smart contract’s code automatically executes the terms when tokens are deposited. The benefits include:Digital format: There’s no need to print or post paper, and it’s easily shareable.Autonomous operation: It cuts out intermediaries, there’s no back-and-forth.Trust: Information on a smart contract is encrypted and backed up on a shared ledger.Security: Encryption makes contract information incredibly difficult to steal.Speed: Automatic execution makes smart contracts faster.Cost: It saves on paper costs, lawyer fees, etc.Smart contracts act as multi-signature accounts, only executing if the specified percentage of parties agree.Smart contracts can be encoded on any blockchain, but developers working on Ethereum can programme smart contracts with a much broader range of instructions than what’s possible on Bitcoin. It allows Ethereum smart contracts to be more complex and versatile. They can serve as the base for a decentralised application or other autonomous functions on the blockchain.Why is Ethereum better than Bitcoin?ETH has several advantages over Bitcoin. It isn’t limited in the same way that BTC is. Ethereum uses the Ethash method for its mining algorithm. As a result, the block processing speed is faster.What is the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum?BTCETHCoin Limit21 MillionNoneAlgorithmSHA-256EthashAvg block time10 minutes12 secondsHowever, Ethereum’s main advantage over Bitcoin is its functionality. Bitcoin can only record transactions. Ethereum powers apps that can be used for almost anything a programmer desires.What is an ETH wallet?An Ethereum wallet is where the private keys to access the cryptocurrency are stored. The StormGain crypto trading platform comes with a built-in ETH wallet, in which you can earn up to 10% annual interest on your currency.Cryptocurrency tradingEthereum is the crypto coin with the second-largest market share after Bitcoin. Ethereum also has the second-highest trading volume among cryptocurrencies. By using StormGain, traders can earn significant bonuses and rewards for trading Ethereum.The price history of ETH, in USD and BitcoinEthereum miningEthereum is currently mined via a proof-of-work algorithm. Much like Bitcoin, Ethereum miners dedicate their computing hardware to solving tasks that support the blockchain and receive ETH in return.What is a good hashrate for Ethereum mining?The frequency with which the ETH mining hardware can process hashes determines how likely it is to earn a reward.A hashrate of around 45.0 MH/s is considered suitable for a consumer GPU. However, the whole mining system may soon become irrelevant for Ethereum.What is Ethereum’s future?Ethereum will upgrade soon to version 2.0, a move planned for 2020. The main feature is a change from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake validation.Ethereum 1.0 is a couple of people’s scrappy attempt to build the world computer; Ethereum 2.0 [with PoS] will actually be the world computer — Vitalik ButerinThe current system is notoriously wasteful of energy. A proof-of-stake protocol will mean that users stake their ETH as collateral to verify a transaction (and claim the reward).On 18 August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered.[11] Later that year, on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System[12] was posted to a cryptography mailing list.[13] This paper detailed methods of using a peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as "a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust".[14][15][16] On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins.[14][17] Embedded in the coinbase of this block was the text:The Times Jan/03/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.[18]The text refers to a headline in The Times published on 3 January 2009.[19] This note has been interpreted as both a timestamp of the genesis date and a derisive comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.[20]:18The first open source bitcoin client was released on 9 January 2009, hosted at SourceForge.[21][22]One of the first supporters, adopters, contributors to bitcoin and receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was programmer Hal Finney. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software the day it was released, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the world's first bitcoin transaction on 12 January 2009 (bloc 170).[23][24] Other early supporters were Wei Dai, creator of bitcoin predecessor b-money, and Nick Szabo, creator of bitcoin predecessor bit gold.[14]In the early days, Nakamoto is estimated to have mined 1 million bitcoins.[25] Before disappearing from any involvement in bitcoin, Nakamoto in a sense handed over the reins to developer Gavin Andresen, who then became the bitcoin lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, the 'anarchic' bitcoin community's closest thing to an official public face.[26]The value of the first bitcoin transactions were negotiated by individuals on the bitcoin forum with one notable transaction of 10,000 BTC used to indirectly purchase two pizzas delivered by Papa John's.[14]On 6 August 2010, a major vulnerability in the bitcoin protocol was spotted. Transactions weren't properly verified before they were included in the transaction log or blockchain, which let users bypass bitcoin's economic restrictions and create an indefinite number of bitcoins.[27][28] On 15 August, the vulnerability was exploited; over 184 billion bitcoins were generated in a transaction, and sent to two addresses on the network. Within hours, the transaction was spotted and erased from the transaction log after the bug was fixed and the network forked to an updated version of the bitcoin protocol.[29] This was the only major security flaw found and exploited in bitcoin's history.[27][28][30]Satoshi Nakamoto[edit]Main article: Satoshi Nakamoto"Satoshi Nakamoto" is presumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who designed the original bitcoin protocol in 2008 and launched the network in 2009. Nakamoto was responsible for creating the majority of the official bitcoin software and was active in making modifications and posting technical information on the bitcoin forum.[14] There has been much speculation as to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto with suspects including Dai, Szabo, and Finney – and accompanying denials.[31][32] The possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto was a computer collective in the European financial sector has also been discussed.[33]Investigations into the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto were attempted by The New Yorker and Fast Company. The New Yorker's investigation brought up at least two possible candidates: Michael Clear and Vili Lehdonvirta. Fast Company's investigation brought up circumstantial evidence linking an encryption patent application filed by Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry on 15 August 2008, and the bitcoin.org domain name which was registered 72 hours later. The patent application (#20100042841) contained networking and encryption technologies similar to bitcoin's, and textual analysis revealed that the phrase "... computationally impractical to reverse" appeared in both the patent application and bitcoin's whitepaper.[12] All three inventors explicitly denied being Satoshi Nakamoto.[34][35]In May 2013, Ted Nelson speculated that Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki is Satoshi Nakamoto.[36] Later in 2013 the Israeli researchers Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir pointed to Silk Road-linked Ross William Ulbricht as the possible person behind the cover. The two researchers based their suspicion on an analysis of the network of bitcoin transactions.[37] These allegations were contested[38] and Ron and Shamir later retracted their claim.[39]Nakamoto's involvement with bitcoin does not appear to extend past mid-2010.[14] In April 2011, Nakamoto communicated with a bitcoin contributor, saying that he had "moved on to other things".[18]Stefan Thomas, a Swiss coder and active community member, graphed the time stamps for each of Nakamoto's 500-plus bitcoin forum posts; the resulting chart showed a steep decline to almost no posts between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. Because this pattern held true even on Saturdays and Sundays, it suggested that Nakamoto was asleep at this time, and the hours of 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. GMT are midnight to 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (North American Eastern Standard Time). Other clues suggested that Nakamoto was British: A newspaper headline he had encoded in the genesis block came from the UK-published newspaper The Times, and both his forum posts and his comments in the bitcoin source code used British English spellings, such as "optimise" and "colour".[14]An Internet search by an anonymous blogger of texts similar in writing to the bitcoin whitepaper suggests Nick Szabo's "bit gold" articles as having a similar author.[31] Nick denied being Satoshi, and stated his official opinion on Satoshi and bitcoin in a May 2011 article.[40]In a March 2014 article in Newsweek, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman doxed Dorian S. Nakamoto of Temple City, California, saying that Satoshi Nakamoto is the man's birth name. Her methods and conclusion drew widespread criticism.[41][42]In June 2016, the London Review of Books published a piece by Andrew O'Hagan about Nakamoto.[43] The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto still remains a matter of dispute.Growth[edit]2011[edit]Based on bitcoin's open-source code, other cryptocurrencies started to emerge.[44]The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group, started accepting bitcoins in January 2011,[45] then stopped accepting them in June 2011, citing concerns about a lack of legal precedent about new currency systems.[46] The EFF's decision was reversed on 17 May 2013 when they resumed accepting bitcoin.[47]In June 2011, WikiLeaks[48] and other organizations began to accept bitcoins for donations.2012[edit]In January 2012, bitcoin was featured as the main subject within a fictionalized trial on the CBS legal drama The Good Wife in the third-season episode "Bitcoin for Dummies". The host of CNBC's Mad Money, Jim Cramer, played himself in a courtroom scene where he testifies that he doesn't consider bitcoin a true currency, saying, "There's no central bank to regulate it; it's digital and functions completely peer to peer".[49]In September 2012, the Bitcoin Foundation was launched to "accelerate the global growth of bitcoin through standardization, protection, and promotion of the open source protocol". The founders were Gavin Andresen, Jon Matonis, Patrick Murck, Charlie Shrem, and Peter Vessenes.[50]In October 2012, BitPay reported having over 1,000 merchants accepting bitcoin under its payment processing service.[51] In November 2012, WordPress started accepting bitcoins.[52]2013[edit]In February 2013, the bitcoin-based payment processor Coinbase reported selling US$1 million worth of bitcoins in a single month at over $22 per bitcoin.[53] The Internet Archive announced that it was ready to accept donations as bitcoins and that it intends to give employees the option to receive portions of their salaries in bitcoin currency.[54]In March, the bitcoin transaction log, called the blockchain, temporarily split into two independent chains with differing rules on how transactions were accepted. For six hours two bitcoin networks operated at the same time, each with its own version of the transaction history. The core developers called for a temporary halt to transactions, sparking a sharp sell-off.[55] Normal operation was restored when the majority of the network downgraded to version 0.7 of the bitcoin software.[55] The Mt. Gox exchange briefly halted bitcoin deposits and the exchange rate briefly dipped by 23% to $37 as the event occurred[56][57] before recovering to previous level of approximately $48 in the following hours.[58] In the US, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for "decentralized virtual currencies" such as bitcoin, classifying American bitcoin miners who sell their generated bitcoins as Money Service Businesses (or MSBs), that may be subject to registration and other legal obligations.[59][60][61]In April, payment processors BitInstant and Mt. Gox experienced processing delays due to insufficient capacity[62] resulting in the bitcoin exchange rate dropping from $266 to $76 before returning to $160 within six hours.[63] Bitcoin gained greater recognition when services such as OkCupid and Foodler began accepting it for payment.[64]On 15 May 2013, the US authorities seized accounts associated with Mt. Gox after discovering that it had not registered as a money transmitter with FinCEN in the US.[65][66]On 17 May 2013, it was reported that BitInstant processed approximately 30 percent of the money going into and out of bitcoin, and in April alone facilitated 30,000 transactions,[67]On 23 June 2013, it was reported that the US Drug Enforcement Administration listed 11.02 bitcoins as a seized asset in a United States Department of Justice seizure notice pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 881.[68] This marked the first time a government agency claimed to have seized bitcoin.[69][70]In July 2013, a project began in Kenya linking bitcoin with M-Pesa, a popular mobile payments system, in an experiment designed to spur innovative payments in Africa.[71] During the same month the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department in Thailand stated that bitcoin lacks any legal framework and would therefore be illegal, which effectively banned trading on bitcoin exchanges in the country.[72][73]On 6 August 2013, Federal Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas of the Fifth Circuit ruled that bitcoins are "a currency or a form of money" (specifically securities as defined by Federal Securities Laws), and as such were subject to the court's jurisdiction,[74][75] and Germany's Finance Ministry subsumed bitcoins under the term "unit of account" – a financial instrument – though not as e-money or a functional currency, a classification nonetheless having legal and tax implications.[76]In October 2013, the FBI seized roughly 26,000 BTC from website Silk Road during the arrest of alleged owner Ross William Ulbricht.[77][78][79] Two companies, Robocoin and Bitcoiniacs launched the world's first bitcoin ATM on 29 October 2013 in Vancouver, BC, Canada, allowing clients to sell or purchase bitcoin currency at a downtown coffee shop.[80][81][82] Chinese internet giant Baidu had allowed clients of website security services to pay with bitcoins.[83]In November 2013, the University of Nicosia announced that it would be accepting bitcoin as payment for tuition fees, with the university's chief financial officer calling it the "gold of tomorrow".[84] During November 2013, the China-based bitcoin exchange BTC China overtook the Japan-based Mt. Gox and the Europe-based Bitstamp to become the largest bitcoin trading exchange by trade volume.[85]In December 2013, Overstock.com[86] announced plans to accept bitcoin in the second half of 2014. On 5 December 2013, the People's Bank of China prohibited Chinese financial institutions from using bitcoins.[87] After the announcement, the value of bitcoins dropped,[88] and Baidu no longer accepted bitcoins for certain services.[89] Buying real-world goods with any virtual currency had been illegal in China since at least 2009.[90]2014[edit]In January 2014, Zynga[91] announced it was testing bitcoin for purchasing in-game assets in seven of its games. That same month, The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel and Golden Gate Hotel & Casino properties in downtown Las Vegas announced they would also begin accepting bitcoin, according to an article by USA Today. The article also stated the currency would be accepted in five locations, including the front desk and certain restaurants.[92] The network rate exceeded 10 petahash/sec. TigerDirect[93] and Overstock.com[94] started accepting bitcoin.In early February 2014, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox,[95] suspended withdrawals citing technical issues.[96] By the end of the month, Mt. Gox had filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan amid reports that 744,000 bitcoins had been stolen.[97] Months before the filing, the popularity of Mt. Gox had waned as users experienced difficulties withdrawing funds.[98]In June 2014 the network exceeded 100 petahash/sec.[citation needed] On 18 June 2014, it was announced that bitcoin payment service provider BitPay would become the new sponsor of St. Petersburg Bowl under a two-year deal, renamed the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl. Bitcoin was to be accepted for ticket and concession sales at the game as part of the sponsorship, and the sponsorship itself was also paid for using bitcoin.[99]In July 2014 Newegg and Dell[100] started accepting bitcoin.In September 2014 TeraExchange, LLC, received approval from the U.S.Commodity Futures Trading Commission "CFTC" to begin listing an over-the-counter swap product based on the price of a bitcoin. The CFTC swap product approval marks the first time a U.S. regulatory agency approved a bitcoin financial product.[101]In December 2014 Microsoft began to accept bitcoin to buy Xbox games and Windows software.[102]In 2014, several light-hearted songs celebrating bitcoin such as the "Ode to Satoshi"[103] have been released.[104]A documentary film, The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin, was released in 2014, featuring interviews with bitcoin users, such as a computer programmer and a drug dealer.[105]2015[edit]In January 2015 Coinbase raised US$75 million as part of a Series C funding round, smashing the previous record for a bitcoin company. Less than one year after the collapse of Mt. Gox, United Kingdom-based exchange Bitstamp announced that their exchange would be taken offline while they investigate a hack which resulted in about 19,000 bitcoins (equivalent to roughly US$5 million at that time) being stolen from their hot wallet.[106] The exchange remained offline for several days amid speculation that customers had lost their funds. Bitstamp resumed trading on 9 January after increasing security measures and assuring customers that their account balances would not be impacted.[107]In February 2015, the number of merchants accepting bitcoin exceeded 100,000.[108]In October 2015, a proposal was submitted to the Unicode Consortium to add a code point for the bitcoin symbol.[109]2016[edit]In January 2016, the network rate exceeded 1 exahash/sec.[citation needed]In March 2016, the Cabinet of Japan recognized virtual currencies like bitcoin as having a function similar to real money.[110] Bidorbuy, the largest South African online marketplace, launched bitcoin payments for both buyers and sellers.[111]In July 2016, researchers published a paper showing that by November 2013 bitcoin commerce was no longer driven by "sin" activities but instead by legitimate enterprises.[112]In August 2016, a major bitcoin exchange, Bitfinex, was hacked and nearly 120,000 BTC (around $60m) was stolen.[113]In November 2016, the Swiss Railway operator SBB (CFF) upgraded all their automated ticket machines so that bitcoin could be bought from them using the scanner on the ticket machine to scan the bitcoin address on a phone app.[114]Bitcoin generates more academic interest year after year; the number of Google Scholar articles published mentioning bitcoin grew from 83 in 2009, to 424 in 2012, and 3580 in 2016. Also, the academic journal Ledger published its first issue. It is edited by Peter Rizun.2017[edit]The number of businesses accepting bitcoin continued to increase. In January 2017, NHK reported the number of online stores accepting bitcoin in Japan had increased 4.6 times over the past year.[115] BitPay CEO Stephen Pair declared the company's transaction rate grew 3× from January 2016 to February 2017, and explained usage of bitcoin is growing in B2B supply chain payments.[116]Bitcoin gains more legitimacy among lawmakers and legacy financial companies. For example, Japan passed a law to accept bitcoin as a legal payment method,[117] and Russia has announced that it will legalize the use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.[118]Exchange trading volumes continue to increase. For the 6-month period ending March 2017, Mexican exchange Bitso saw trading volume increase 1500%.[citation needed] Between January and May 2017 Poloniex saw an increase of more than 600% active traders online and regularly processed 640% more transactions.[119]In June 2017, the bitcoin symbol was encoded in Unicode version 10.0 at position U+20BF (₿) in the Currency Symbols block.[120]Up until July 2017, bitcoin users maintained a common set of rules for the cryptocurrency.[121] On 1 August 2017 bitcoin split into two derivative digital currencies, the bitcoin (BTC) chain with 1 MB blocksize limit and the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain with 8 MB blocksize limit. The split has been called the Bitcoin Cash hard fork.[122]On 6 December 2017 the software marketplace Steam announced that it would no longer accept bitcoin as payment for its products, citing slow transactions speeds, price volatility, and high fees for transactions.[123]2018[edit]See also: Cryptocurrency bubble § 2018 crashOn 22 January 2018, South Korea brought in a regulation that requires all the bitcoin traders to reveal their identity, thus putting a ban on anonymous trading of bitcoins.[124]On 24 January 2018, the online payment firm Stripe announced that it would phase out its support for bitcoin payments by late April 2018, citing declining demand, rising fees and longer transaction times as the reasons.[125]2019[edit]As of September 2019, there were 5,457 bitcoin ATMs worldwide. In August of that year, the countries with highest number of bitcoin ATMs were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria, and Spain.[citation needed]2020[edit]On 2 July 2020, the Indian company 21Shares started to quote a set of bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETP) on the Xetra trading system of the Deutsche Boerse.[126]On 1 September 2020, the Wiener Börse listed its first 21 titles denominated in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, including the services of real-time quotation and securities settlement.[127]On 3 September 2020, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange admitted in its Regulated Market the quotation of the first bitcoin exchange-traded note (ETN), centrally cleared via Eurex Clearing.[128][129]In October 2020, PayPal announced that it would allow its users to buy and sell bitcoin on its platform, although not to deposit or withdraw bitcoins