Online Cash Bitcoin Could Challenge Governments, Banks

Minimalist · Nov 18, 2018

Why bitcoin exchanges keep getting hacked — and how to protect yourself

The price of bitcoin took a tumble early Wednesday after a major South Korea-based cryptocurrency exchange, Bithumb, admitted hackers made off with more than $31 million worth of virtual currency. The incident is the latest in a long string of thefts at the online portals where investors trade cash for digital coins such as bitcoin and ether. Bithumb has not said how the attack occurred.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ep-getting-hacked-and-how-to-protect-yourself

Minimalist · Nov 18, 2018

Major Swiss Stock Exchange SIX Lists World’s First Multi-Crypto ETP Amidst Market Collapse

Switzerland's principal stock exchange SIX Swiss Exchange will list the world’s first multi-crypto-based exchange-traded product (ETP) next week, the Financial Times (FT) reported Saturday, Nov. 16.

Backed by the Swiss startup Amun AG, the first global multi-crypto ETP will be listed under index HODL, and will track five major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC).
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/majo...orlds-first-crypto-etp-amidst-market-collapse

Minimalist · Nov 18, 2018

Rural Washington County Utility Proposes Increased Electricity Costs for Crypto Miners

Washington’s Chelan County Public Utility District (PUD) has proposed a new electricity pricing structure for cryptocurrency miners meant to pass down the cost of increased electricity demand, Central Washington radio station KPQ reported Nov. 14.
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/rura...increased-electricity-costs-for-crypto-miners

ronjor · Nov 19, 2018

Bitcoin is in a free fall

By Cale Guthrie Weissman 11.19.18
The price of bitcoin is continuing its plummet. This morning, it edged closer to $5,000, hitting a low of $5,165.24, according to Coindesk. That’s the lowest the cryptocurrency’s value has gone since October 2017.
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guest · Nov 19, 2018

Furious Traders Slam Crypto Exchange for Fiddling With Contracts
November 19, 2018
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...m-crypto-exchange-for-fiddling-with-contracts

An unorthodox move by one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency platforms to change the terms on $135 million of derivative contracts has infuriated traders and saddled some of them with losses, underscoring the risks of using unregulated virtual currency exchanges.
The episode at Hong Kong-based OKEx, which claims to handle more than $1 billion of crypto trades daily, involved futures on Bitcoin Cash, the virtual currency that split into two last week.

“OKEx is losing its credibility,” Qiao said. “The futures contract became something nonsense, not something we could use to hedge.”
A lack of confidence in crypto exchanges is one reason many institutional investors are proceeding cautiously as they weigh whether to add exposure to digital assets.
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ronjor · Nov 20, 2018

Bitcoin for payments a distant dream as usage dries up

Tom Wilson November 20, 2018
LONDON (Reuters) - The use of bitcoin for commercial payments has dropped dramatically this year, even as the original digital coin starts to fulfill one of the basic features of any payment currency: stability.
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ronjor · Nov 20, 2018

Bitcoin-Rigging Criminal Probe Focused on Tie to Tether

By Matt Robinson and Tom Schoenberg November 20, 2018
As Bitcoin plunges, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether last year’s epic rally was fueled in part by manipulation, with traders driving it up with Tether -- a popular but controversial digital token.
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guest · Nov 20, 2018

At last, India’s ready to clarify its stance on cryptocurrencies
November 20, 2018
https://qz.com/india/1468426/india-may-soon-decide-how-to-deal-with-bitcoin-cryptocurrencies/

The Indian government may be one step closer to clearly spelling out its policy on cryptocurrencies.
A finance ministry panel set up in November 2017 could be ready with draft regulations next month. This was clarified by the Narendra Modi government in a counter-affidavit, a copy of which has been reviewed by Quartz, filed in the supreme court on Nov. 19.

The next two meetings of the Garg panel, to be held next month and in January 2019, will deliberate the draft report, and the provisions of the draft bill on virtual currencies, the government’s counter-affidavit said.
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Minimalist · Nov 21, 2018

Italian Securities Watchdog Orders Unauthorized Crypto Companies to Cease and Desist

The Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB) has ordered three crypto-related companies providing unauthorized investment services to cease and desist, an official release states Monday, Nov. 19.
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/ital...thorized-crypto-companies-to-cease-and-desist

guest · Nov 21, 2018

Report: Leading Japanese Shipping Line to Introduce Its Own Digital Currency
November 21, 2018
https://cointelegraph.com/news/repo...ng-line-to-introduce-its-own-digital-currency

Japanese shipping company Nippon Yusen K.K. (NYK) is reportedly launching its own digital currency for crew members, Bloomberg reported Nov. 20.

According to Bloomberg, it is not clear whether NYK’s digital currency will use blockchain technology or be a form of cryptocurrency.

NYK will supposedly introduce the digital currency in the first half of 2019, while the initiative presupposes the use of smartphones. Along with paying their own workers, the company is also looking to offer the currency to other shipping operators.
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guest · Nov 22, 2018

Bitcoin Cash ABC update exposes potentially catastrophic vulnerability
November 21, 2018
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/11/21/bitcoin-cash-abc-vulnerability/

[...] it appears that BAB (Bitcoin-ABC’s implementation of Bitcoin Cash) has rolled out a software update that puts its entire network at risk of 51-percent attacks from rogue miners.
51-percent attacks on ABC are cheap
It only gets worse.
Estimates now suggest that for as little as $27,000, attackers can effectively control ABC armed with nothing but a standard, retail cryptocurrency miner.

Surely, $27,000 isn’t all that expensive, but it’s worth noting that if attacker only had access to a single Antminer S9, it would take them two full years of surreptitious mining to be considered a real threat.
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guest · Nov 22, 2018

French tobacco shops will sell Bitcoin and Ethereum starting January 2019
November 22, 2018
https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/22/...l-bitcoin-and-ethereum-starting-january-2019/

The French Federation of Tobacco Vendors (“French Confédération Nationale des Buralistes”), which represents the 27,000 tobacco shops in France, announced that it has approved plans for its members to sell Bitcoin and Ethereum to customers.

Of course, the timing is somewhat less than ideal, as prices of cryptocurrencies have been in free fall most of this year. [...]
On the other hand, it could make it easier for average people to participate in virtual currencies. The program is being done in partnership with KeplerK, a Paris-based digital asset wallet and payment platform.
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ronjor · Nov 22, 2018

Amazon Web Services outage forces major cryptocurrency exchanges offline

Story by David Canellis
Two major South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges have been forced offline, after critical Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers suffered nationwide failure Thursday morning.
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Minimalist · Nov 22, 2018

Blockchain Security Is A People Problem

If there is one thing we know about human nature it is that if something is presented to us as unbreakable, unhackable, unsinkable or inedible, there is always someone with the aptitude and mendacity to crack it. So, it goes with blockchain.
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https://www.comparethecloud.net/art...curity-is-a-people-problem-compare-the-cloud/

Minimalist · Nov 23, 2018

Thailand Proves Crypto Can Win Adoption Even in Military Dictatorships

Since May 2014, Thailand has been under the control of a military dictatorship. And given that the coup, led by the Royal Thai Armed Forces, brought internet censorship, a suspension of the Kingdom's constitution, and a disbanding of its senate, casual observers would be forgiven for supposing that the Southeast Asian country is now possibly one of the least favorable places on Earth for the use and development of technological innovations.
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/thai...n-win-adoption-even-in-military-dictatorships

Minimalist · Nov 23, 2018

Venezuela: Parliament Approves Crypto Bill to Combat 'Financial Blockade'

The Constituent National Assembly of Venezuela has approved a bill on cryptocurrency regulation, the country’s Ministry for Communication and Information reported Nov. 21.

The law was proposed by the country’s leader Nicolas Maduro and consists of 64 articles and five transitory provisions. It validates Petro, Venezuela’s controversial oil-backed cryptocurrency, as a unit of commercial exchange within the country, and states that goods and services can also be purchased with Petro.
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/vene...oves-crypto-bill-to-combat-financial-blockade

Minimalist · Nov 23, 2018

Cryptocurrency ‘minting’ flaw could have leached money from exchanges

Are Ethereum’s new-fangled smart contracts the ultimate point of the blockchain or a risky experiment whose vulnerabilities presage trouble?

Right now, few doubt that smart contracts – instruction workflows in a language called Solidity that automate complex, profitable processes on Ethereum – require close scrutiny.

The latest security flaw was discovered by smart contract developers Level K – a ‘minting’ flaw that would allow an attacker to drain Ethereum exchanges initiating smart contracts.

There are several scenarios in which the vulnerability could be exploited, which has already been revealed to most of the exchanges the researchers thought might be affected.
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https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/20...flaw-could-have-leached-money-from-exchanges/

Minimalist · Nov 23, 2018

South Korean medical group to offer crypto payment platform

Digital Gold Exchange (DGE), South Korean-based blockchain developer of Ethereum-based cryptocurrency TMTG, has announced that it has entered into a partnership with South Korean medical group Regen to develop a cryptocurrency payment platform for the medical industry.
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https://channels.theinnovationenter...edical-group-to-offer-crypto-payment-platform

guest · Nov 23, 2018

Lightning-Powered Blog Sees 20,000 Bitcoin Micropayments in 7 Months
November 23, 2018
https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-lightning-invoice-micropayments

Few projects have done as much to explore crypto micropayments as the year-old Yalls blog created by Lightning Labs developer Alex Bosworth.
It costs roughly one cent to read a Yalls article, half a cent to leave a comment on a post, and 10 cents to react to a post with an emoji. Publishing an article is free.

“One nice thing about micropayments is that it brings back anonymity to the web,” Bosworth told CoinDesk. “I’m really a fan of the idea that your identity doesn’t have to be tied to a username and password.”
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guest · Nov 24, 2018

Cash has almost gone extinct in Sweden
Half of Sweden's retailers predict they'll go cashless by 2025
November 24, 2018
https://www.techspot.com/news/77555-cash-has-almost-gone-extinct-sweden.html

Paying with a card or phone or just buying things online first gained popularity due to its convenience, but as the New York Times notes, it’s now at the point where cash is so rare in Sweden it’s costly for shops to support it.

Digital currency is far more profitable for banks, as they get to profit from the fees attached to debit cards, credit cards and Sweden’s bank-developed payment app, Swish. Combined, those three are how 95% of purchases made by young adults are paid for.

Next year the central bank will begin implementing e-krona, the digital currency that may replace Sweden’s traditional krona.
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guest · Nov 25, 2018

Free Software Messiah Richard Stallman: We Can Do Better Than Bitcoin
November 25, 2018
https://www.coindesk.com/free-software-messiah-richard-stallman-we-can-do-better-than-bitcoin

The GNU Project, which Stallman founded, is working on an alternative digital payments system called Taler, which is based on cryptography but is not – forgive the hair-splitting – a cryptocurrency.

The Taler project’s maintainer Christian Grothoff told CoinDesk that the system is, rather, designed for a “post-blockchain” world.
Concerned with privacy…
He told CoinDesk, “What I’d really like is a way to make purchases anonymously from various kinds of stores, and unfortunately it wouldn’t be feasible for me with bitcoin.”

“If bitcoin protected privacy, I’d probably have found a way to use it by now.”
…But not ‘perfect’ privacy
That pessimism aside, the GNU Project’s Taler does share some aspects with cryptocurrency projects – most notably it aims to fill the same niche.
Payments are processed by openly centralized “exchanges” rather than peer-to-peer networks of miners because, Grothoff said, such a system “would again enable dangerous, money laundering kind of practice.”
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hawki · Nov 25, 2018

FYI

Bitcoin USD

$3,521.56

-310.52 -8.10%

Last Updated: Nov 25, 2018 5:26 a.m. EST

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/cryptocurrency/btcusd

ronjor · Nov 25, 2018

Ohio will let businesses pay their taxes with Bitcoin

By Andrew Liptak@AndrewLiptak Nov 25, 2018
The first in the nation
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guest · Nov 25, 2018

Paraguay Endorses Plan to Build the World’s Largest Bitcoin Mining Farm
November 25, 2018
https://ethereumworldnews.com/parag...build-the-worlds-largest-bitcoin-mining-farm/

According to a press release from the “Commons Foundation” the project known as the “Golden Goose Project” will be implemented in Ciudad del Este, one of the country’s main cities, known especially for its tourism industry and commercial development.

It is important to note that, the Blockchain Technology Foundation “Commons Foundation” plans to conduct a series of pre-sales and an Initial Exchange Offering under Paraguayan laws to fund the project. Funding mechanisms will be through MicroBitcoin(MBC), BTC(Bitcoin), and Ethereum(ETH).

“We will create a new world-class ecosystem through ‘Golden Goose project,’ which is the world’s largest cryptocurrency mining center and the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.”
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guest · Nov 26, 2018

Battered Bitcoin Miners May Start Shutting Down
November 26, 2018
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ing-down-as-losses-pile-up?srnd=technology-vp

Bitcoin miners hit hard by the cryptocurrency’s crash may be throwing in the towel.

The Bitcoin network’s hash rate, one way of gauging the computing power dedicated to mining the digital currency, dropped about 24 percent from an all-time high at the end of August through Nov. 24, according to Blockchain.com.
[...] “This suggests that prices have declined to a point where mining is becoming uneconomical for some,”

The break-even cost to mine a single Bitcoin using Bitmain’s Antminer S9 rig was estimated at $7,000 in a Nov. 16 report by Fundstrat Global Advisors, though the level is probably lower for some miners with access to cheap electricity and equipment.
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