Day: August 22, 2017

Online poker is a big market that cryptocurrency has the chance to change irreversibly. In the many online casinos and poker sites, players are assigned a random number for identification purposes. However, the generators for those numbers can be influenced by outside forces, potentially compromising the privacy of players. Cash Poker Pro is looking to change that by implementing blockchain technology to benefit players.

Cash Poker Pro Is a Modern Decentralized Poker Room

Cash Poker Pro is a modern and decentralized online poker room whose network structure enables fast and confidential money transfers for players via the blockchain. The project started when its team looked at today’s online poker industry to try and identify the problems present in this popular method of online gambling. The team boasts over 10 years of experience in gambling and an additional three in poker specifically, so they know their stuff. Having conducting their research, they were particularly concerned with the privacy of players and the centralization of many online casinos. With knowledge of players’ numbers and unimpeded access to the actual game’s code base, many of these sites and poker rooms are understandably distrusted by their players. What is to keep online site owners from exploiting their players’ privacy, or worse, rigging the outcomes of hands to favor the house? It is easy to understand the frustration and fears that players have when thinking about it like this. 

That is where Cash Poker Pro plans to bring in the blockchain to decentralize the online poker world. Its team wants to create a poker room that users and players can trust. To achieve this, Cash Poker Pro will use a decentralized random generator number as opposed to the centralized ones used by other poker rooms. Their overarching goal is to bring online poker rooms to messenger platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook. They feel this is an unoccupied niche that could be potentially very lucrative. The project is far from just a white paper, as they have some key partners with whom they have already done business elsewhere.

CASH Tokens and the Pre-ICO

Cash Poker Pro will begin its Pre-ICO offering CASH tokens to the public in a few days. This ethereum-based token will act as the native currency for Cash Poker Pro’s poker rooms. Investors can purchase these tokens at a rate of 1 CASH to US$0.05. That price will jump up to US$0.40 a token at the beginning of the actual ICO in late October.

Players will be able to bet these tokens in the poker rooms themselves and trade them on supporting exchanges. Those who hold these tokens are also entitled to a monthly distribution of profits from the project. If the project turns a profit that month, holders will receive 50% of profits. That 50% is distributed among holders proportional to the amount of CASH each holds.

Check out the project here: https://cashpokerpro.io

Here’s their whitepaper: https://cashpokerpro.io/whitepaper.pdf

Their GitHub repo is here: https://github.com/cashpokerpro-dev/

Their promotional YouTube video: https://youtu.be/YjWw_olW1hQ

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any Merkle employees. This is not investment or trading advice; always do your own independent research.

The price of XRP, the cryptocurrency of the Ripple network, rose more than 40% today.

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Transmission wants to usher in a future where you will pay no more than one percent of the transaction amount.

So that’s another day done in our bitcoin price trading efforts and we’ve had a pretty good one. As we noted this morning, volatility across the evening session brought price to trade a little bit lower than we might have liked, but not to the point that we could write off a near term reversal … Continue reading Bitcoin Price Watch; Riding Out The Volatility

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By now, Android users know that they should avoid installing apps from third-party websites and unsolicited download prompts. Those who do not take security seriously end up having to deal with malware that can potentially cost them thousands of dollars. Faketoken, a one-year-old malware strain, recently evolved into a serious security threat, according to Kaspersky Labs.

Faketoken Is No Joke

Faketoken, according to various reports, used to cause low-level infections. It has recently been upgraded by its developers, and now has a better attack mechanism and reaches a lot more people.

Kaspersky researchers were not able to reconstruct the events leading to an infection, but believe the malware sneaks onto smartphones through bulk SMS message campaigns that prompt users to download pictures. Those that do so get infected.

Once on the system, Faketoken obfuscates itself by hiding its shortcut icon. It then remains undetected while monitoring which apps the user opens, which messages are being received, phone calls, and the like, and sends all that information to its command and control (C&C) server.

Notably, the Faketoken malware can put screen overlays on an estimated 2,000 apps to trick users into handing its admins their credit card info. When a user launches one of these applications, the malware substitutes the app’s UI with a fake one. The substitution is instantaneous so the user is completely unaware. The damage can be significant, as all of these apps support linking bank cards. Kaspersky stated:

“It should be noted that all of the apps attacked by this malware sample have support for linking bank cards in order to make payments. However, the terms of some apps make it mandatory to link a bank card in order to use the service.”

Since most of these apps require two-factor confirmation through an SMS code, fraudsters complete the process by having Faketoken monitor incoming text messages to catch one-time passwords and redirect them to its server before the user ever sees them.

More Advanced Version to Come

Kaspersky Labs warned that this version of Faketoken is still rather new, and that more advanced versions are to be expected. In fact, those versions may already be out in the wild. To protect yourself against this and other types of malware, be very careful with attachments from unknown sources, do not install apps from third-party sources, and use an anti-malware app.

Faketoken’s screen overlays indicate that the version Kaspersky tested was still unfinished, as it contained formatting errors that would make it obvious to the victim that something is off. Interestingly, the malware has been mainly spotted in Russia and other ex-Soviet countries. The researchers stated:

“To this day we still have not registered a large number of attacks with the Faketoken sample, and we are inclined to believe that this is one of its test versions. According to the list of attacked applications, the Russian UI of the overlays, and the Russian language in the code, Faketoken.q is focused on attacking users from Russia and CIS countries.”

Members of Congress are advancing research into blockchain security standards, according to a new podcast.

The IRS has been using blockchain tracking tools developed by Chainalysis since 2015, public records reveal.

It looks like ViaBTC is not giving up on its plan to make Bitcoin Cash mining more attractive. The company has noticed that a lot of Bitcoin miners have switched to the BCH chain due to improved profitability. After all, every miner wants to make as much money as possible, and right now, that means not mining Bitcoin. The company hopes to make this process significantly easier by introducing a new service that switches to the more profitable chain automatically.

Bitcoin Cash Mining Picks Up Significantly

More people are mining Bitcoin Cash than ever before. There are many reasons for why that is currently the case. First and foremost, BCH mining is over 100% more profitable compared to mining Bitcoin. That in itself is not all that surprising, even though the value of one BCH is under 20% of the current BTC value. Both chains have the same 12.5 coin block reward paid out in BTC or BCH respectively.

ViaBTC is one of the market leaders when it comes to mining Bitcoin Cash. (That is, assuming you discount the “unknown” entity which seemingly mines the vast majority of network blocks to this very day.) That situation may change now that the top two Bitcoin mining pools are slowly contributing additional hashpower to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain as well. Only time will tell how this situation plays out in the future, as it remains to be seen if BCH remains more profitable for the next few weeks and months.

Miner are busing in switching their hash power. We will soon lunch a smart Bitcoin mining service, mining MOST profitable chain automatic. pic.twitter.com/8ziMwG1NNT

— ViaBTC (@ViaBTC) August 21, 2017

With mining being so profitable, ViaBTC is planning to introduce a new feature. Right now, its miners have to swap between BTC and BCH manually, which can be quite cumbersome to some. To make things a bit more straightforward, the company will introduce a smart Bitcoin mining service which automatically switches to the more profitable coin to mine. This means users will always get the most bang for their buck in terms of cryptocurrency mining, which can only be a good thing. It is unclear when this feature will be implemented, as there is no official ETA just yet.

Changes are also coming to the Bitcoin Cash mining ecosystem. Right now, the mining difficulty is just 7% of the Bitcoin network difficulty. That in itself makes it more profitable to mine BCH, despite its value taking quite a beating across the exchanges. When this difficulty changes for the worse, mining BCH will become more difficult. If the value per coin does not pick up by that time, the relative profitability of mining Bitcoin will increase once again. It is a very interesting ecosystem, but things can go from bad to worse pretty quickly if there is a lack of hashrate to support the nascent network.

Right now, though, that does not appear to be much of a problem. The Bitcoin Cash network has close to 2 exahash of mining power, which is quite significant. It does not appear the overall Bitcoin mining hashrate is going down, which is pretty unusual. Someone is seemingly bringing additional mining hardware online for the sole purpose of mining BCH. While this is an interesting turn of events, it remains to be seen if other miners will follow suit.

All things considered, people have not given up on Bitcoin Cash just yet. There is still plenty of bad blood between community members, however. A lot of people feel BCH is a scam and needs to be put down as quickly as possible. Others think it will eventually overtake Bitcoin and become the longest blockchain. The arms race is in full effect. Which chain will come out on top remains to be determined, but it is likely Bitcoin will not be displaced anytime soon. The new feature to be implemented by ViaBTC is still pretty intriguing, though.

Many people speak of using blockchain to arrange voting, but the idea hasn’t been applicated in practice yet. Voting usually means holding elective events of various levels. However, it makes sense to argue in a more applied manner. The number of consumers of such a kind of services is limited, and the complication of integration … Continue reading Decentralized Voting: Has the Future Arrived?

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The third Global Blockchain Summit Shanghai will get underway next month despite the unforeseen circumstances of a similar event in August.

Ever since Bitcoin Cash was launched, there have been a lot of conflicting reports regarding the adjustable mining difficulty. A new chat log involving Greg Maxwell seemingly indicates how BCH miners can willingly take advantage of this algorithm and ensure they generate a higher amount of coins on demand. That is quite a serious accusation, even though the information provided by Maxwell seems to confirm this is indeed possible. Additionally, it seems the way the difficulty is calculated leaves much to be desired as well.

Bitcoin Cash Mining Difficulty Concerns

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned over how the Bitcoin Cash mining difficulty is determined. We have seen a major influx of hashpower over the past few days, yet the network difficulty is still only at 7% of the Bitcoin blockchain. That seems quite strange, as this lower difficulty combined with a higher hashrate allows mining pools to successfully reap block rewards in quick succession. In fact, the average block time is down to around three minutes at the time of writing, which means around 280 BCH is created on the network every hour.

Figuring out why this is even possible has proven to be pretty challenging. Everyone knows the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem uses a different mining difficulty algorithm which can introduce sharp drops or increases whenever needed. Right now, it seems more hashpower results in a lower mining difficulty and more coins being generated. This is a very unusual turn of events, as it causes a ton of speculation as well.  One of the people weighing in on these discussions is none other than Gregory Maxwell.

In his opinion, there are several flaws in the BCH mining difficulty readjustment. First of all, it is possible for miners to ramp up the difficulty and mine away for 12 hours after it will attempt to readjust. It is this 12-hour window that has Maxwell somewhat concerned, since it appears the difficult calculation process is flawed at best. The chat log claims how the network blocks leave an old timestamp on previous blocks for a bit before jumping up to the normal time to trigger the difficulty adjustment. After this trigger occurs, they will repeat the process over and over again to keep the difficulty low and coins flowing in.

If that is not enough to be concerned about, it appears any BCH miner can successfully trigger these difficult adjustments with little effort. Even if other entities would try to prevent it from happening, they will be unsuccessful in doing so. This will result in more network blocks being created and more BCH brought into circulation. That would certainly explain why the Bitcoin Cash price is coming down hard over the past 48 hours. It appears there are a lot of coins being sold at an accelerated pace.

Maxwell also states the following:

“And of course, inflating the mining income is in the collective short term interests for all bch miners… (maybe you can argue that in the long term they’re better off not doing things that might show weaknesses and lower its value)”

Assuming there is some truth to these statements one would have to ask themselves who would benefit from this inflated coin production. ViaBTC is the only mining pool generating a lot of blocks, although Antpool and BTC.com may have something to say about this. Both pools are now mining BCH as well, although it is possible they hashrate will not go up by much over the next few days. Additionally, the BCH price was also heavily inflated due to trading on Bithumb, which is a zero-fee exchange

All things considered, there are a lot of discussions pertaining to Bitcoin Cash right now. There is also a lot of speculation and misinformation, which is only made worse by the lack of a proper BCH development team right now. For a cryptocurrency with a market cap of around $10 billion, there is a lot of work to be done. It will be interesting to see how things play out in the coming weeks and months, but a lot of people will keep a  close eye on the mining situation.

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase was awarded a new patent for Bitcoin Security Concept.

Players’ desire to somehow earn money while playing is nothing new. Real money trading in games has always been illegal or at least strongly discouraged by most game developers, especially in MMORPGs. Coincidentally, it’s in MMORPG where real money trading is most common, since those games always have virtual economies in which game “gold” and other resources have some real value. Real money trading can be a big deal, with the most expensive known purchase being for $6 million in a game called Entropia Universe!

Lordmancer II is a MMORPG for mobile phones and tablets running Android and iOS. The game is basically ready to ship. It is currently in soft launch in Russia. There’s plenty of game content still to be added, but the framework of the game is there. Retention and payments metrics are already looking good.

Lordmancer II seeks to legalize typically “illegal” market for game items by introducing a cryptocurrency token as a second “hard currency” named Lord Coin. The most rare and precious weapons and items will be available for purchase only for LC.

Lordmancer II encourages its players to “farm” rare and valuable weapons and artifacts in the game and sell them to other players, earning LCs in the process. Those LCs they will subsequently sell for BTC or ETH at a crypto exchange. Also, players will be encouraged to “cultivate” characters for sale.

To make the whole system less complicated for those not familiar with cryptocurrencies, Lordmancer II will offer ways of purchasing LordCoins directly for fiat money, inside and outside of the game. This way, rich players (“whales”) ready to spend a lot on game items will have a convenient way to purchase rare items, while those players willing to earn some money will have an opportunity to do it without violating game policy, in an open, fair, supported and transparent way.

With each trade made with LCs, the game will burn a fraction of the tokens involved. This will result in ever decreasing amount of LCs being available on the market, which in turn will push the price of remaining LCs ever higher.

Lordmancer II has announced a pre-ICO which starts on August 21. Participants of the pre-ICO will receive 60% discount on Lord Coins.

Pre ICO information:

Start date and time: August 21, 2017 at 06:00 am GMT

End date and time: September 21, 2017 at 06:00 am GMT

Token supply: 2 000 000

Token Cost: 1 LC = $0,05

Distributed by: Ethereum smart contract

Learn more about Lordmancer II and the ICO through their White Paper: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AtHyJaAqXgPAgslabUq333piWVe-gw

Lordmancer II Pre-ICO site: http://lordmancer2.io/

Follow Lordmancer II on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LordmancerI

Telegram channel: https://t.me/lm2ico

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any The Merkle employees. This is not investment or trading advice, always do your own independent research.

The GoldMint company (the innovator behind the stable GOLD token and Custody Bot) has published its plans for its greatly anticipated ICO. The ICO will launch on September 20, beginning with the sale of MNT pre-launch tokens (MNTP). This will be the first step toward a revolutionary new form of digital currency: gold-backed cryptoassets. How … Continue reading GoldMint to Launch ICO with Early Bird Bonuses

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