Day: August 14, 2017

A US-based money manager is seeking to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tied to the price of bitcoin.

No, code is not law. But if the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s new members have anything to say about it, that might someday change.

BitGo is one of the most renowned companies in all of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The company made a name for itself by focusing on multisignature technology, which is integrated into its solutions by default. Having such a valuable industry leader acknowledge Bitcoin Cash in a positive manner is significant. BitGo has now provided a tool connected to the BCH fork, even though it took some extra time to complete.

BitGo Finally Integrates Bitcoin Cash Transactions

Quite some time ago, BitGo‘s team announced they would be providing support for the somewhat contentious Bitcoin Cash hard fork. The company had always planned to support BCH in one way or another through an updated tool. It has taken them a bit longer than expected to successfully integrate BCH into their platform, but that is not entirely surprising. Trezor faced some issues when integrating Bitcoin Cash as well.

With the new infrastructure in place, BitGo clients can move their BCH tokens out of the wallet if they want to do so. BitGo has enabled full support for Bitcoin Cash from this point forward, and its native wallet solution allows for both receiving and sending of such transactions. It is good to see more Bitcoin Cash-capable wallets popping up. With both Trezor and BitGo now on board, things are heading in the right direction.

Every BitGo user who had a Bitcoin balance prior to the August 1st fork will now see their BCH balances credited to their accounts automatically. The platform’s API will also support BCH moving forward. This means any developer can access BitGo wallets and send coins through the same unified interface they’ve used for Litecoin, Ethereum, and other cryptos. The fact that exchanges can benefit from this solution as well could yield some interesting results over time.

Some of the most prominent companies in the world rely on BitGo. Having multisignature solutions at one’s disposal is of the utmost importance. In particular, exchanges dealing with cryptocurrency wallets in a secure manner enjoy using BitGo’s multisignature solutions. Virtually every exchange using a cold storage solution for customer funds will have some partnership with BitGo. It is impossible to deny the company’s powerful position in the broader industry.

Although the Bitcoin Cash price has been declining, the ecosystem is still on the right track. Mining support is growing, more services integrate BCH support, and there do not appear to be any major network issues. Despite some major challenges, Bitcoin Cash is still the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, which is a lot more than most people had expected.

One intriguing statistic is how Bitcoin Cash now has 76 trading markets, according to Coinmarketcap. In comparison, Bitcoin has around 400 markets. There is still a lot of work to be done in the coming months. The support by BitGo is quite significant for BCH supporters, since it further validates the project as a whole. Bitcoin Cash will continue to be an interesting market to keep an eye on, as it has seemed to hang on far better than some Bitcoin supporters would have liked to see.

The increasing values of Bitcoin will continue to give rise to new real world use cases for increasing liquidity.

A second installment of Bitcoin Tulip Mania criticism comes in the form of BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones calling it a bubble.

Bitcoin rising to $5,000 could result in misery for altcoins, with one trader forecasting 20% slides across the market.

Ransomware comes in many different shapes and sizes. Some malware projects try to affect as many people as possible around the world, whereas others target specific communities. Polski ransomware falls into the latter category, and it is clearly designed to threaten Polish computer users. The entire ransom note is written in Polish and will not make much sense to people who do not speak the language. Getting rid of the malware will be challenging for everyone.

Polski Ransomware Is No Laughing Matter

This particular type of computer malware targets Polish consumers. Considering how we have seen multiple ransomware types target Ukraine these past few months, it is not entirely surprising that more such variants would show up over time. After all, there are cyber criminals who have some sort of beef with a specific country and its population. Targeting people in one’s own country is never a good idea and usually results in police involvement.

Not too much information is known about Polski ransomware at this point, other than how it encrypts one’s files and demands a Bitcoin payment to restore access. It does appear this particular malware can be used to encrypt files on local hard drives, as well as those on any external memory device connected to the machine. Network shares could be affected as well, although that has not yet been confirmed by researchers.

Distribution of this particular malware appears to occur through spam campaigns. A lot of ransomware developers have been focusing on spam campaigns as of late, as it remains one of the more reliable ways to distribute malicious software on an incredibly large scale. Many email service providers still cannot block these malicious attachments from being delivered. All emails are targeted to Polish speakers, although it is unclear how this is achieved.

Any file encrypted by Polski ransomware will show up as a blank icon in Windows Explorer and cannot be opened by any means. Once the encryption process is completed, users will see a Polish ransom note advising them to make a US$249 payment in Bitcoin. Failing to cough up the money within 72 hours will result in the required payment amount increasing by as much as 100%. This is a scare tactic, of course, and it remains to be seen if that will actually happen.

Polski ransomware is yet another type of malware which does not use a central command & control server. This tactic has become more common among cyber criminals. Not relying on centralized servers often allows them to operate under the radar for longer periods of time. It is unclear how much of a threat Polski ransomware will become, given the scope of its target user base.

Getting rid of Polski is not easy by any means. There is no free file decryptor available, and it is unclear if there ever will be. However, there is no indication that this ransomware deletes the shadow volume copies on one’s computer. This should make file recovery through a backup possible in most cases.  Keeping a backup of sensitive information is always the advised course of action, whether or not one ever has to deal with a malware attack.