Items tagged with bitcoin
Yesterday, criminal hackers stole approximately $600 million in varying cryptocurrencies from the PolyNetwork, a blockchain interoperability company. Now, in an interesting turn of events, the hackers have begun returning the stolen funds in what was to be one of the biggest cryptocurrency thefts ever. As it stands, cryptocurrencies all have their standalone networks, which means that going between them would be difficult at best. However, PolyNetwork aims to interconnect Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others through smart contracts and interconnections between other crypto chains. Interestingly, malicious hackers were reportedly able to exploit a vulnerability in the EthCrossChainManager contract and...
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As the user base for cryptocurrency grows, so too do politicians and regulators looking to stymie the situation due to taxation and illicit activity concerns. Now, President Biden has backed a plan to tax proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum via an amendment to a major bill advancing in the U.S. Senate. The amendment that would change taxing for decentralized finance (DeFi) owners was brought up by Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Mark Warner (D-VA) in a cross-aisle move. The change would provide tax reporting exemptions to validators and developers attached to proof-of-work (PoW) networks like Bitcoin, leaving proof-of-stake (PoS) and other types of networks in the cold. Senators...
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Just last week, Bitcoin crashed below $30,000, descending to its lowest point in a month, and dropping to less than half of its peak value from April of this year. And today? It is not only back above $30,000, it is fast approaching $40,000 on speculation that Amazon will soon begin accepting the volatile cryptocurrency for online purchases. At the time of this writing, Bitcoin is up nearly 13 percent in the past 24 hours, to $38,449. That's still well below its all-time high of $64,829, but for proponents of Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency in general), it is again trending in the right direction. It also highlights the wild swings that the world's most popular digital currency is prone to. It seems...
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What goes up must come down, but when it comes to cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin in particular, wild up and down swings feel like normal occurrences (it was just a short while ago when Bitcoin and Ethereum fueled a cryptocurrency explosion to a $2 trillion valuation). And that is what Bitcoin investors are hoping is occurring right now—just a normal downward swing, as the digital currency comes crashing below the $30,000 mark for the first time in a month. At the time of this writing, Bitcoin is trading at $29,694.34. That's down from around $31,000 yesterday, and less than half of where Bitcoin peaked at in April of this year, when it topped $60,000. Will it go back up? Probably, but for...
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Is cryptocurrency a capitalistic scam, only benefitting the wealthy? That is what Jackson Palmer, co-founder of Dogecoin, seems to think after reemerging on Twitter to explain his take on the current state of crypto. On July 14th, Palmer addressed the frequent question of whether he will return to cryptocurrency after leaving Dogecoin behind. While his simple answer is “no,” there is much more behind this than meets the eye. First of all, Palmer believes that cryptocurrency is “an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially...
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As Bitcoin prices skyrocketed earlier this year, all cryptocurrencies were under the microscope by people around the globe. Specifically, energy-consumption concerns arose as miners built out massive mining operations to execute the “proof-of-work” system that makes cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin tick. However, none of that matters if you are stealing electricity, as the Ukrainian Security Service discovered earlier this month. Now, Malaysian police have found this problem for themselves, but they are sending a message with it. For serious cryptocurrency miners, custom-built computers for mining are called an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). These are significantly better...
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Ransomware incidents are on the rise worldwide with no end in sight, and trying to fight back is like trying to punch a ghost, it seems. However, using empirical data and evidence, we can figure out what does and does not work to smother ransomware. Thanks to a new website called Ransomwhere, anyone can now track this evidence and figure out the full impact of ransomware while looking at the big picture. Last week, white-hat hacker Jack Cable announced the crowdsourced ransomware payment tracker website Ransomwhe.re. He explained that “there's no comprehensive public data on the total number of ransomware payments” and that without this, “we can't know the full impact of ransomware,...
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Back in June, China made the decision to crack down on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, leading to tumbling prices and a mass exodus of miners. This is now beginning to have rippling effects beyond cryptocurrency as Chinese miners are beginning to dump GPUs on the secondhand or used marketplace. On Twitter, a video recently posted by user Wolfie Zhao shows popular Chinese secondhand market Xianyu inundated with GPUs that were used for mining. However, since China has effectively put a stop to mining, these graphics cards, which have been in short supply, are now generally useless. Not just ASICs, Chinese miners been dumping stacks of GPUs too on Xianyu, one of the largest marketplace apps for...
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On July 4th, we reported that the developing Kaseya ransomware incident might be much worse than initially thought. While it is still unclear exactly how many victims and encrypted devices there are, it was apparent that this is certainly a wide-reaching international incident. We also noted that REvil, the Russian-backed hacking group, had not mentioned the situation on its blog, until now. Late in the evening on July 4th, REvil made a blog post about its Kaseya attack after much speculation. The group explained that the attack launched on July 2nd has since encrypted “more than a million systems.” However, it seems that this ransomware event is being treated differently than most,...
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In May, China began a cryptocurrency crackdown that kicked off a mass exodus of digital miners from the country. Since then, this crackdown has continued and even been reaffirmed as of late with several major mines' shutdown. This has put cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum into a tailspin, and it is hard to tell where this will end. In the past two months, Bitcoin has lost over 40% of its value, and some investors are rightfully concerned. With this loss, analysts report that Bitcoin has formed a "death cross," which means the average price over the last 50 days fell below its 200-day moving average. According to Investopedia, this is sometimes viewed as a signal that a massive sell-off...
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Though cryptocurrency mining is becoming less profitable by the day, those who still have the hardware may as well use it. However, it sucks up a lot of energy and dumps a lot of heat, which suspiciously looks like a marijuana grow house, as it turns out. Earlier this month, police in London were tipped off to a building within the Great Bridge Industrial Estate, Sandwell. Using drone surveillance, police saw a characteristic heat signature and people regularly going in and out. Therefore, when the police raided the location on May 18th, they were expecting a cannabis farm, but that is not what they found. Upon entry, they saw shelves full of up to 100 application-specific integrated circuit...
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China is one of the largest cryptocurrency mining countries in the world, in part due to its sheer population, cheap electricity, and easy access to electronics. This year, Bitcoin and other large cryptocurrencies took off alongside new coins like Chia, which saw immense popularity in China. Now, the Chinese government has cracked down on cryptos overall, and miners are pulling out of the country, leading to a sharp price slump across the board. Will this trend continue, or will cryptocurrencies recover in traditional fashion? Last Friday, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He announced a crackdown on Bitcoin mining and trading to “fend off financial risks.” This announcement came just...
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It has been a tumultuous week for cryptocurrencies as many of the major coins have taken a nosedive off a cliff, such as Bitcoin sitting at $34,000 at the time of writing. As this is happening, many crypto exchanges, like Binance and Coinbase, are feeling the pressure and may be struggling for it. Citing issues like network congestion and partial outages, these companies temporarily paused transactions, either by choice or involuntarily but have now restored some service. Earlier this morning, Coinbase faced “intermittent downtime” on its platforms, tweeting that some customers were “experiencing some issues with logging in, seeing their balances, and trading.” The initial...
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Over the past two weeks, Colonial Pipeline has been battling a ransomware attack that crippled fuel flow to the eastern seaboard. This was supposedly not intended to be as catastrophic as it was, but the hacking group behind the attack, DarkSide, has quite a bit of experience in ransomware. The group has reportedly extracted approximately $90 million in Bitcoin from 47 different cryptocurrency wallets, with many more victims opting not to pay the ransom. Ransomware is becoming a highly profitable business model for hackers, and even more so when “Ransomware as a Service” (RaaS) is implemented. DarkSide is an example of this model, wherein there is a ransomware developer who oversees...
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Meme coins have been on the rise, with Dogecoin taking off and other cryptocurrencies attempting to follow suit. This has caused some trouble for the rest of the cryptocurrency world as fees have gone up and the legitimate cryptocurrency market is diluted. Now, one of the cofounders of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has donated $1 billion in meme coins to a COVID-19 relief fund for India, which may have rippling effects. While Buterin donated quite a bit to other charities, the big donation of the bunch is 500 Ethereum, and a whopping 50 trillion SHIB worth roughly $1.14 billion at the time of the transaction was sent to the India Covid-Crypto Relief Fund. The founder of this fund, Sandeep Nailwal,...
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Tesla founder Elon Musk ruffled some feathers on Twitter by announcing that Tesla is no longer accepting Bitcoin currency. Just hours after the tweet went out, Bitcoin's value plunged 17 percent from around $54,800 to $45,700. It has since regained some of its value, but the cryptocurrency is still down more than 10 percent in 24 hours as investors mull the implications. The announcement comes less than two months after Musk tweeted out, "You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin" in the United States. At the time, Musk said Tesla would also accept Bitcoin from outside the US sometime later this year. And back in January, Tesla had invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, according to its annual 10-K report...
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As we reported over the weekend, Ethereum has seen a monumental rise in value during the opening months of 2021. Ethereum kicked off the new year valued at $730 and this morning surpassed the $3,000 mark to hit $3,148 (as of this writing). To put this performance in perspective, just a week ago, Ethereum was sitting at $2,500. However, the cryptocurrency likely won't stop here as deVere Group CEO Nigel Green predicts that we could see another massive surge. According to Green, Ethereum could pass $5,000 within the next week. While that comment may have seemed like an outlandish prediction just a few months ago, the current cryptocurrency boom takes a bit of the edge off the skepticism. "Ether...
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Gamers looking to purchase a current-generation graphics card from NVIDIA or AMD at MSRP have found the task damn near impossible. There are several reasons for this phenomenon, including the immense performance that these graphics cards provide in games; the resulting demand from gamers eager to get their hands on one; and the meteoric rise in the value of cryptocurrencies. One cryptocurrency that has been on an incredible run during 2021 is Ethereum, which is at an all-time high. Ethereum is currently sitting at just over $2,900 in value, a nearly 4x increase since the start of 2021. Bitcoin sharply increased its value over the past four months as well. The dominant cryptocurrency entered 2021...
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When we hear of ransomware attacks, it usually involves high-value targets, such as the recent $50 million attack against Apple supplier Quanta. This time, a ransomware gang took a different approach and targeted consumers and small businesses using QNAP devices and subsequently encrypted their files. In just five days, the gang managed to collect $260,000 in Bitcoin for unlocking all the devices they took hostage. On Monday, a ransomware operation called Qlocker kicked off, exploiting new vulnerabilities in QNAP NAS devices and leaving users to wake up to their files being locked up. The ransomware gang behind this pulled it off by scanning the web for connected QNAP devices and then locking...
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When people think of cryptocurrencies, they typically think of the big players like Ethereum or Bitcoin, both of which hit new heights this year. Besides these two major cryptos, there is a whole world of alternates out there that people have created, including a smaller meme-coin called Dogecoin. This coin was previously lower than a penny earlier this year and then shot up to $0.43 yesterday, so what exactly is going on here? Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency created by engineers Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus back in 2013 as a fun poke at the other cryptocurrencies coming up at the time. The Doge mascot, according to KnowYourMeme, is "a slang term for 'dog' that is primarily associated with...
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It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that cryptocurrencies are soaring to new highs. The valuation increases have also brought in a wealth of individuals and companies looking to cash in by mining for cryptocurrencies like Ethereum with GPUs that gamers would have otherwise bought. The huge cryptocurrency run culminated today with a cumulative valuation topping $2 trillion. Not surprisingly, Bitcoin and Ethereum make up the bulk of that $2 trillion figure, with the former hitting a 24-hour high of $58,243 with a total market cap of $1.10 trillion. Ethereum, on the other hand, had a 24-hour high of $2,118 with a market cap of $244.38 billion. Rounding out the top five cryptocurrencies...
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A fraudulent app in Apple's App Store enabled a scammer to swipe $600,000 worth of Bitcoin from an iPhone user, depleting him of his life savings that he hoped would salvage his dry cleaning business. It's an unfortunate situation that both serves as a cautionary cryptocurrency tale, and highlights a need for better vetting of mobile apps. That latter part is an admittedly difficult task. There are nearly 2 million apps in the App Store, and new ones are being added all the time. There is a process developers have to go through. Even so, malicious apps sneak through, some of which contain malware, and others designed to trick users into forking over their cryptocurrency details. Sadly for Phillipe...
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