Day: July 5, 2017

The growing population of Bitcoin enthusiasts has alerted the government and led to Virtual Currency: Financial Innovation and National Security Implications hearing where Coin Center gives the Congress true picture of how Bitcoin works.

The past few weeks have been exciting for Litecoin. Now that LTC broke its previous all-time high earlier today, things are looking good for the altcoin. This price increase is a culmination of all of the good news surrounding Litecoin over the past few months. With this in mind, Litecoin seems to be a more solid investment than both Bitcoin and Ethereum at this time.

Litecoin Surges past $50 to Test new ATH

Many people in the Litecoin community feel the LTC currency is vastly undervalued. There is some truth to that sentiment, as Litecoin scales better than both Bitcoin and Ethereum right now. It also provides faster payments compared to those two as well. However, Litecoin’s price stayed well below $40 for a very long time. It appears that trend is coming to end, as Litecoin has hit a new all-time high of $56.03.

That is a significant price increase. Signs of an upward trend were visible all day yesterday, with the price going well past $50. However, many speculators felt there would be a sharp pullback. Considering how Litecoin’s price was just $41.09 two days ago, such a sharp price increase is often followed by an even sharper retrace. That does not appear to be the case, which will please quite a few Litecoin users.

Things have looked promising for Litecoin over the past few months. All of the major mining pools came together to ensure Segregated Witness would activate on the network. Such a degree of collaboration seems unthinkable among Bitcoin users and miners. Otherwise, we would have seen SegWit activate months ago on the Bitcoin network. This also goes to show the Litecoin community is very different from Bitcoin’s.

Today's my last day at @coinbase! I will miss working with you all.

I'm going to shift my focus to Litecoin now. To the moon! pic.twitter.com/Ys9dZwtTFO

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) June 10, 2017

More good news for Litecoin came as Charlie Lee left Coinbase. This development surprised many people, since there was no real indication Charlie would leave the company. However, he decided to focus on developing Litecoin full-time once again. It remains unclear which new developments the community can expect, but the news was well-received by the community.

Litecoin is in high demand across Asian cryptocurrency exchanges these days. The top three LTC trading platforms are Bithumb, OKCoin.cn, and Huobi. Other platforms, with the exception of Poloniex, do not even come close to these trading volumes. With close to $1 billion traded in 24 hours, things are looking extremely good for Litecoin right now. Assuming more merchants enable Litecoin payments in the future, things will get even more interesting moving forward.

Compared to the two other top cryptocurrencies, Litecoin is in a league of its own. Bitcoin has seen a lot of sideways momentum with some sharp pullbacks now and then. Ethereum is hemorrhaging value, although it is unclear what is triggering this negative market pressure. From an investment point of view, Litecoin may be the better choice for the time being. If this momentum keeps up, LTC may finally break that three-digit value sooner rather than later.

Users of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken are taking action over the startup’s alleged mismanagement of a flash crash in its ether order books.

Source

A controversial intelligence law passed by the UK last year could drive increased digital currency use according to a new report.

Source

For about a week and a half, the Bitcoin network’s transaction congestion and rising fee market has subsided. People are now reporting on how they are sending transactions for smaller fees, and some of them are having difficulty with wallets that are recommending fees that are much higher than needed.

Also read: The Decentralize Your Life Tour: An Interview With Derrick Broze 

Bitcoin’s Network Congestion Has Subsided For Now

The amount of unconfirmed transactions has been significantly lower than usual with the mempool (transaction queue) averaging roughly 7,000 to 15,000 unconfirmed transactions per day. This is a stark contrast to the 200,000+ transactions held up in the mempool just a few weeks prior. The transaction stress started diminishing around the first week of June and has continued to decline to the levels we are at today.

Since the number of unconfirmed transactions has dropped and there has been more room for bitcoin transactions — fees have also dropped. Less than two years ago anyone could send some bitcoin for a fee of roughly $0.02 worth of BTC, but this past May fees reached an average median of $5 per transaction. However, fees now have abated to levels under a dollar and some as low as $0.25 according to a few bitcoin proponents.

Difficult to Verify Theories

Of course, there are multiple theories detailing how the number of unconfirmed transactions has waned and why the fee market is significantly lower than a few weeks prior. Some believe the issue stemmed from a “spam attack” where an individual or group sends a large amount of low fee transactions relentlessly. However, people believe the cost to keep this attack going is considerable and some proponents believe this theory is merely a conspiracy.

Another reason people believe transactions and fees are lower is due to less bitcoin activity. For instance, the price of bitcoin has dropped a few times after reaching all-time highs, and people are not transacting as much. Alongside this, trade volume has weakened as well to less than $1 billion compared to $2 billion USD worth of BTC trades per day. Some have also attributed the prior congestion and higher fees towards the use of darknet mixers. Another theory is that companies like Genesis mining, and other bitcoin businesses are moving/batching more transactions “off-chain” instead of settling as often as previously done. Many of these theories are difficult to verify.

Wallets and Fee Charts Having a Hard Time Adjusting

Since the fee market and unconfirmed transaction count has lowered, many people have been having issues with wallets that don’t allow custom fees. Some wallets offer three different settings in order for senders to prioritize their transactions, while others offer custom settings. For instance, this morning Breadwallet recommended that a fee of $1.78 for a typical transaction size of 226 bytes. Additionally going over to 21 Inc’s fee converter website, the tool details the “fastest and cheapest transaction fee is currently 300 satoshis/byte” for a 226-byte transaction which equals $1.73 at press time. Many wallets and fee charts have higher than needed fee recommendations for the time being.

There are other wallets that offer custom fees where users can manually lower the setting to under 300 satoshis/byte which will likely confirm just as fast as the higher recommended fee settings. Most wallets utilize a dynamic fee setting which suggests only three choices and are usually based off tools like 21 Inc’s inaccurate chart. However, there are a few wallets that offer custom fees including Blockchain.info, Trezor, Armory, Green Address, Airbitz and more.

During these times when congestion is low, users can check the mempool to see if there is a minimal amount of unconfirmed transactions and possibly get away with paying a lower fee. Bitcoin users can opt to pay the economy fee rate within their wallet settings or may even want to switch to wallets that offer customized fee settings. The choice is entirely up to the user, but for now, the Bitcoin network’s congestion is diminished and fees are lower. 

What do you think about the number of unconfirmed transactions dropping and the fees being lower? Have you experienced paying cheaper fees for transactions? Let us know about it in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Bitpay, Trezor, and Blockchain.info. 

Show the world how cutting-edge you are with a bitcoin T-shirt, hoodie, bag, key-ring, even a Trezor hardware wallet. Shipping all over the world, quality merchandise and, of course, a payment system that makes people say “wow!”

The post Unconfirmed Transactions Queue and Bitcoin Fees Drop Considerably appeared first on Bitcoin News.

The post Ether Price Analysis: Decrease in Buy Volume Pushes Price Lower appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

UK police have brought fraud and money laundering charges against Ryan Kennedy, the founder the now-defunct dogecoin exchange service Moolah.

Source

Your guide to which adult content platforms are Bitcoin-friendly.

The Cerber ransomware is no more. The ransomware itself is still active, but now goes by a different name. As of last week, the malicious tool has rebranded to CRBR. Developers may be trying to confuse security researchers countering its efforts. It is not a new cyber threat, so current protection and countermeasures should hold up to it.

A New Name for Cerbere But Identical Inner Workings

Even ransomware developers have to properly evaluate their business model. As we so often see in the technology sector, a rebranding can revitalize a business. Cerber has never suffered from a lack of popularity. However, the developers felt now is a good time to rebrand to CRBR Encryptor. The new cover does not mean this malware threat is more potent than before, since it is literally the same programming.

The main thing to remember is how Cerber will always remain Cerber, regardless of what it is officially called by its developers. This rebranding effort does not introduce any new changes under the hood. We have seen multiple malware threats this year so far, and a more potent Cerber is not on anyone’s wish list right now.

It appears the rebranded Cerber is actively distributed through a few dedicated campaigns currently. The MagnitudeEK exploit kit seems to be the main source of distribution for the time being. Malicious individuals can install CRBR ENCRYPTOR by taking advantage of an exploit to attack vulnerable systems. A new spam email campaign is making the rounds, which is distributing the malware in the form of an email attachment.

Researchers believe other methods of distribution may also be in effect, although they have yet to be analyzed fully. We know it is the same Cerber as before when we look at how it encrypts files. This is both good and bad news, as system administrators still detest Cerber. The most annoying part is how CRBR ENCRYPTOR will still scramble file names. It is far from the worst part of this ransomware, but still annoying.

On the payment front, very little has changed. Victims are redirected to a Tor-based website where they need to make a 0.5 BTC payment. Failing to do so will increase the price to 1 Bitcoin after five days. This is just a repackaged version of one of the most annoying ransomware types in history. The bigger question is what the developers hope to achieve by switching the name to CRBR ENCRYPTOR, as it offers no obvious advantages.

Contrary to what most people would have expected, this is not a different type of malware, nor it is a copy-paste project. It is the official Cerber ransomware as we have seen so many times. This is a very strange decision by the ransomware developers, as there appears to be no good reason to have done it. Even the new name is not all that different from Cerber.

Ethereum is likely to be regulated by many governments in the upcoming months. Some countries including South Korea, China, and the US are already preparing to regulate Ethereum and its ICO market. This is because of the rising popularity of initial coin offerings (ICOs) and large amounts of capital being invested in them.

A Popular Ethereum May Mean a Regulated Ethereum

A project called EOS raised more than $335 million in total through their ICO campaigns as investors funded a project they knew practically nothing about.

EOS released a peculiar investment advice document entitled “Token Purchase Agreement” which claims that its native token EOS does not have a purpose or a use case. It went on to say that it should not be considered or used as a currency, investment, and/or commodity.

“As mentioned above, the EOS Tokens do not have any rights, uses, purpose, attributes, functionalities or features, expressed or implied. Although EOS Tokens may be tradable, they are not an investment, currency, security, commodity, a swap on a currency, security, or commodity or any kind of financial instrument,” the document read.

If the EOS token does not have any uses, purpose, or functionalities then purchasing the token seen superfluous. The primary purpose of the token is be to fuel decentralized applications launched on top of the EOS protocol but it has not even started testing this on its network. In fact, it is planning to run its first heavy testing and security audit in Spring of 2018, as explained by its software roadmap on their Github repository. So why would they do this? It seems counter productive.

Popular ICOs need to be careful since their legal status is uncertain. In fact, EOS laid out guidelines in order to avoid running in conflict with the US SEC. The EOS development team also emphasized that investors residing in the US are not permitted to purchase or participate in the EOS ICO or crowdsale. The legality of ICOs in the US remains unclear.

This is true in other countries as well. Currently, China is considering regulating the Ethereum industry and the ICO market due to their popularity. On June 2, Chinese cryptocurrency news source revealed that the Chinese central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), is planning to regulate Ethereum and its ICO market in the upcoming months.

​Yao Qian, Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Department at PBoC, said that Ethereum is moving toward the right direction since it provides an autonomous smart contract-based infrastructure for decentralized applications and real business applications.

Qian explained that Ethereum is triggering a rapid development of blockchain-based applications in China and other regions. He said:

“You can open a real intelligent business application. Because of this, smart contract technology is in rapid development.”

On July 3, Park Yong-jin, representative of the ruling Democratic Party of South Korea, revealed that the government intends to regulate the Ethereum market by this year with the focus set on protecting investors and traders from bubble bursts, money laundering and tax evasion. The ICO market is likely be regulated along with Ethereum.

The Turkish government is preparing to initiate a two-year plan designed to crush illegal gambling within the nation. Among the regulations currently under consideration by the Turkish government are measures intended to prevent the use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for illegal gambling activities. 

Also Read: Bitwala Steps Up to Replace PayPal with Bitcoin in Turkey

The Turkish State Will Introduce Harsh Punitive Measures for Those Caught Involved in the Illegal Gambling Industry

Reports have revealed that Turkey is preparing to initiate a two-year long crackdown on illegal gambling, including a focus on trying to “prevent the use of alternative spending methods, such as Bitcoin, ethereum and ripple, for illegal gambling activities”

Turkey’s new gambling offensive will be implemented by the Interior and Justice Ministries in partnership with the Police Department and the Revenue Department. The departments will establish a designated task force that will comprise representatives of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK), Revenues Department, Financial Crimes Investigation Council (MASAK), and the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), and will be headed by a special prosecutor. The BDDK will be tasked with preventing the use of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for illicit gambling activities, among other duties.

The Turkish state will introduce harsh punitive measures for those caught involved in the illegal gambling industry. Organizers and intermediaries who profit from illicit gambling will be forced to forfeit their income, and houses in which unlicensed gambling is taking place will be temporarily seized. Large fines will be introduced for shops such as internet cafes that facilitate their customers accessing illegal online gambling websites.

The BDDK is expected to monitor banking and credit card records as a measure to detect individuals who are engaged in such activities. The search engine habits of Turkish citizens will similarly be tracked. Websites and media outlets that advertise gambling sites will be shut down, and anti-gambling propaganda will be distributed throughout internet cafes.

It Is Likely That the Nation-Wide Offensive on Illegal Gambling May Drive Much of Turkey’s Underground Gambling Industry Toward Bitcoin

Turkey’s offensive against illicit gambling comes at a time of growing recognition that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies pose unconventional challenges to traditional gambling regulations. Calvin Ayre, the founder of Canadian gambling and entertainment company, Bodog, recently stated that cryptocurrency may be making gaming regulations “less relevant’, describing bitcoin as “eat[ing] the online gambling industry.”

Turkey has seen record-breaking P2P bitcoin trading volume in 2017, with commentators citing the falling value of the Lira and last year’s exit of Paypal from Turkey as driving demand for bitcoin. It is likely that the nation-wide offensive on illegal gambling may drive much of Turkey’s underground gambling industry toward bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption in a bid to bypass the surveilled Turkish banking system.

Despite recognizing the challenges that bitcoin and cryptocurrency based online gambling sites may pose to Turkey’s bid to crack down on illicit gambling, Turkey has not developed legal classifications or regulations for virtual currencies. The absence of a legal apparatus pertaining to bitcoin may obfuscate the prosecution process of those alleged to have profited from illegal gambling activities.

Do you think that the Turkish government will be able to prevent citizens from using cryptocurrency to access illicit gambling websites? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock

At News.Bitcoin.com all comments containing links are automatically held up for moderation in the Disqus system. That means an editor has to take a look at the comment to approve it. This is due to the many, repetitive, spam and scam links people post under our articles. We do not censor any comment content based on politics or personal opinions. So, please be patient. Your comment will be published.

The post Turkey to Initiate Major Crackdown on Illegal Gambling appeared first on Bitcoin News.