Day: August 1, 2017

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have become the new norm among cybercriminals lately. Many people have looked to these attacks to punish any online service they don’t like or wish to extort. One person responsible for a fair amount of those attacks was arrested in the U.S. late last week. He had also made several death and bomb threats against his targets. Kamyar Jahanrakhshan is no stranger to the U.S. criminal justice system either.

DDoS Extortionist Had a Criminal Record

Going after cybercriminals responsible for DDoS attacks is not all that easy. Criminals can launch their attacks from anywhere in the world and often route them through infiltrated systems around the globe. In most cases, they are ultimately tracked down as a result of using a command and control server, which is often accessed through a VPN or proxy. However, there are always some digital breadcrumbs to follow, which is exactly what U.S. authorities did in this case.

American authorities had been looking for the person responsible for multiple DDoS attacks. This individual had also made death and bomb threats against the likes of the Sydney Morning Herald, CBC, MetroNews Canada, and even the Canadian government. Shutting down online platforms is one thing, but issuing death and fake bomb threats is something else entirely. It turns out the person responsible for these attacks is Kamyar Jahanrakhshan, a man of Iranian descent.

Jahanrakhshan had obtained U.S. citizenship back in 1991, although he moved to Canada in 1995. As it turns out, he is no stranger to the Justice Department, having been involved in a theft case in 2005 and a fraud case six years later. People with a tendency to conduct criminal activities will often resort to their old habits, which is seemingly what happened here. As it turned out, trying to get his criminal record erased from the Internet is what ultimately did him in.

Jahanrakhshan contacted websites which had written articles about his prior criminal record. All of these sites were contacted in a cordial manner at first, but after refusing to comply with his demands, things turned violent pretty quickly. It did not take all that long until Jahanrakhshan started sending threatening emails and even hinted at potential “attacks by hackers” if the sites did not comply. Threatening the freedom of the press is never an advisable thing to do. 

The cybercriminal then proceeded to portray himself as a member of the Anonymous hacking collective. That in itself is both despicable and silly, as it only served to attract more unwanted attention from all sides. Eventually, he launched a DDoS attack against Leagle.com after the site refused to take down articles which involved his criminal record. Because the company could not handle the attack, they eventually complied with the hacker’s wishes. This ultimately resulted in other DDoS extortions throughout 2015 and 2016. It does not appear any money ever changed hands.

When U.S. authorities finally uncovered Jahanrakhshan’s identity, he was taken into custody and currently awaits trial. It is expected he will face up to five years of jail time and be forced to pay a fine of US$250,000 or more. According to his record, he previously used stolen credit cards to buy luxury cars and a boat. His actions will only make his criminal record more notorious, rather than getting it removed from the internet altogether as he had hoped. It was a bad idea from the start.

Who are Bitcoin users? How old are they? What do they do? Find out in our article.

The Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) is currently offering six open positions for digital currency related fields.

People with an interest in cryptocurrency often look at different ways to earn Bitcoins and other currencies using different means. It appears some have looked into the concept of grid computing to make some money in a passive manner. However, the concept of grid computing may not necessarily lend itself to mining cryptocurrency. Now would be a good time to look into the idea of grid computing and exactly what it means.

Grid Computing Can Be Quite Powerful

There would not appear to be a big difference between grid computing and fog computing. Both concepts revolve around collecting computer resources from multiple locations to achieve a common goal. In fog computing, this means wielding the power of multiple devices in one’s home or region to complete any task. Grid computing is not all that different from that.

Grid computing is considered to be a distributed system with non-interactive workloads involving a large number of files. It is not entirely the same as fog computing since grid computing has every node set to perform different tasks or applications. Additionally, grid computing devices are more geographically dispersed, whereas fog computing seeks to wield resources in one’s own region first and foremost. Both concepts are valid for different purposes, although they may not be suited for every single task in the same way.

To put this into perspective, grid computing can serve a dual purpose. On the one hand, it can be used to combine resources to complete a specific task, such as cryptocurrency mining. However, the more common approach is to use this system for multiple purposes at once, such as maintaining different aspects of a software suite. If a grid computing network grows large enough, it can rival some smaller supercomputers. This is part of the reason why grid computing is often referred to as a super virtual computer.

In actuality, there is a big difference between grid computing and supercomputers. Distributed computing requires resources that are fully equipped with onboard CPUs, GPUs, storage, power supplies, and the like. Additionally, it requires an internet connection; otherwise, people could not connect to those resources. Any application requiring multiple parallel computations — cryptocurrency mining, for example — benefit from such a network.  A supercomputer often has a customer operating system, whereas grid computing is achieved using a convenient network interface.

It seems there are dedicated markets for grid computing resources. Most of these services are offered in the context of the grid middleware market, which is the “official” marketplace for grid-enabled applications. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is another example of how grid computing can make a big impact. Last but not least, there is the utility computing market to be taken into account. Demand for grid computing is a bit of a hit-or-miss right now.

Readers may already be aware of projects employing grid computing. BOINC and Folding@home are two projects that come to mind almost immediately. In addition, SETI@Home and GIMPS both utilize computing resources from all over the world to achieve their goals. It is good to see so many projects flock toward grid computing instead of renting hardware from providers that charge too much and require users to sign up for year-long contracts.

At the time of writing, the Bitcoin Cash fork is planned to come in roughly 3 hours, you can check the countdown timer on timeanddate. This means that those that have their funds on a compatible wallet will receive Bitcoin Cash at a 1:1 rate according to their Bitcoins. If you haven’t yet, make sure to move your coins off of exchanges that will not support BCH in order to receive the tokens.

While this $200 drop is anticipated, it still comes as a surprise as only 4 hours earlier the market didn’t show any signs of bearish movement. However, the price dipped over 10% in a matter of minutes as a few major sell orders executed on exchanges. It only makes sense that the price would dip roughly $200-300 because that is the current value of the BCH futures.

On the flip side, Bitcoin Cash has been trading at a steady $200 but recently peaked at over $400 as traders couldn’t stop buying up the asset. Currently, ViaBTC is taking the lead with the futures BCH marked as it has 10x the trading volume compared to Kraken which only implemented BCH hours ago, and HitBTC whose BCH market is questionable as it is trading at over $700.

As we covered earlier, Bitcoin Cash has never been “free money”, such a thing doesn’t exist. The same exact thing happened with the ETH / ETC fork, as soon as the chain split happened the original cryptocurrency’s value dropped. However, when you combined both ETH’s and ETC’s value, it came out to roughly the same pre-fork price.

Another reason why Bitcoin’s price may be dropping is because of Coinbase’s decision not to support or credit the token. Not only did Coinbase refuse to support BCH, but they also delayed withdrawals for those wanting to get their Bitcoins off of the exchange. Tim Wu, professor at Columbia University and contributing writer to NY Times said in a tweet that the company may be liable for users’ losses if it doesn’t credit users with the new token.

In my opinion, @coinbase is courting serious, maybe ruinous legal trouble if it doesn't give its users the full value of the Bitcoin fork

— Tim Wu (@superwuster) July 30, 2017

Many users have been disgruntled with how Coinbase has been handling this situation, because withdrawal delays started around July 29th which was still days away from the hard fork. Some argue that Coinbase didn’t give enough of a warning or opportunity to withdraw those funds and users are now going to essentially loose over $300 per Bitcoin that they own.

These are exciting times for Bitcoin. To see the fork go live check out blockchain.info. When you see a block that is larger than 1000kb that is the sign that the new fork has activated and the chain split has taken effect. Furthermore, if you take a look at the detailed blocks list on Blockchain, you will see that the new blocks will no longer be marked as appearing on the “main chain”, but will be marked as appearing on an alternate BCH chain.

Blockchain-powered networks contribute to improving financial inclusion in developing countries.

The entire Bitcoin Cash situation has created some very interesting discussions over the past few weeks. Whether or not BCH tokens have significant value remains to be seen for now. If the IOU and futures markets are any indication, however, we could be in for a very wild ride over the next few days. It is notable that Bitcoin Cash futures are trading at almost twice the value of the BCH IOUs right now.

Bitcoin Cash Futures vs BCH IOUs

Considering how Bitcoin Cash tokens do not even exist yet, the market interest is quite surprising. Ever since ViaBTC announced they would be trading BCH tokens against both the Chinese Yuan and Bitcoin, people have been trying to influence the price of the nascent altcoin. Although the platform’s trading volume has been a bit hit-or-miss, the price is seemingly holding its own around the 0.125 BTC mark.

To put that into easier numbers, it means one Bitcoin Cash will be worth roughly one-eighth of a Bitcoin at current prices. That puts the value of non-existent BCH tokens at around US$340, which is not half bad. Granted, Bitcoin Cash was trading at nearly US$900 less than a week ago, and the ongoing price declines are not too positive when looking at the bigger picture. However, the market has overcome a low of 0.079 BTC per Bitcoin Cash, which was hit less than 48 hours ago. This goes to show that in BCH we see quite a bit of volatility, but indeed that is nothing new in cryptocurrency.

It is rather strange to see Bitcoin Cash futures trading at around US$750 right now. These futures contracts are associated with a currency that, again, doesn’t actually exist right now. However, this price on HitBTC shows there is some potential bullish momentum for Bitcoin Cash on the horizon. If these futures’ prices are something to take into account, the value of every individual BCH token could more than double in price over the next few days. Considering the tokens will be issued at a 1:1 ratio to Bitcoin holders, that is a lot of money being brought into circulation right away.

There will soon be as many BCH tokens in circulation as there are bitcoins right now. Both currencies will have similar supply caps as well, with no more than 21 million tokens to be issued in the long run. The way things are looking right now, there may be a large number of people looking to dump their Bitcoin Cash tokens during the first few hours after the fork. At the same time, this would create plenty of buying opportunity for everyone who firmly believes their BCH tokens will indeed become worth a lot of money.

The big question is whether or not Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash will ever compete with one another. In a way, they will be in the same position as Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. BCH tokens are created due to an ideological difference regarding the future of the project. Bitcoin will integrate Segregated Witness to ensure cheaper transactions and an increase in the transaction throughput. Bitcoin Cash, meanwhile, is looking for direct block size increases with plans to go as high as 8 MB per block in the next few years. It is possible that network could see blocks sized at 32MB at some point as well, depending on how things evolve.

With the Bitcoin Cash futures and IOU prices so far apart, interesting things are bound to happen today. Most people know the fork will occur today and will spawn the Bitcoin Cash tokens for which people have been waiting. It will be an interesting day for Bitcoin, although the dust will only settle after a few days or weeks from now. We look forward to seeing how things play out.

Middle-Eastern company Royal Kingdom Enterprise, based in Dubai and producing blockchain-related products, has just launched the beta version of their distributed exchange, called “Tomorrow Exchange. It is a sweet spot between centralized and decentralized exchanges, combining both the security and convenience of use. In light of recent events when BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange (which many have … Continue reading Distributed Crypto Exchange Launched by a Dubai based Startup Royal Kingdom Enterprise

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